


The Sparkle Pony of Doom

by whichstiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Donuts, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Kelpies, M/M, Minnesota, Sam Has Powers, Sparkly horses, Stillwater, Team Free Will, Water Horses, Witches, backahasten, spncasefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-08 19:53:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11088768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Sam hasn't had a prophetic vision for years but lately he wakes up sweating and sick, dreaming of water slipping silently into his mouth. It's easy to ignore until Sam, Dean, and Cas head to Minnesota to help Donna with a case. People are mysteriously drowning along the St. Croix river. In this case filled with magic, death, and lots of donuts, can Sam get to the bottom of these visions?





	1. Castles

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [SPN Case Fic Bang](http://spncasefic.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Huge thanks to [dreamsfromthebunker](https://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/) for their [fabulous art](https://dreamsfromthebunker.tumblr.com/post/161384093315/spn-case-fic-bang-sparkle-art)!

The house was a castle on the hill, built from pale native stone with wide windows inset like thickly cut crystal. Densely overgrown maple and buckthorn and the steep sandstone cliff that faced the house on the opposite bank walled off the property more effectively than a medieval gate. A lone figure presided, wrapped in a loose robe like a mourning cloth, her gaze upturned to the sky.

Angela Somerset clutched a glass of moon-pale wine. It was either very early or quite late. Exhaustion dragged at the lines of her face until she felt like a deep shadowed thing, holding the railing as though she might blow away if she dared to loosen her grip. She didn’t - couldn’t - sleep much these days. The night was too quiet, the bed too cold. The muddied waters of the Saint Croix river ate her husband almost a year ago. She stood on the broad back patio that framed the back of the home they had shared together and marveled how, even now, she could not hate the waters that swallowed him up.

Angela took a deep breath in and held it until her lungs burned. Slowly, she exhaled and set down the wine glass. It was dark back here; they could only see flickering lights from their neighbors in the winter when the branches were bare. Across the water, sandstone bluffs provided nearly absolute privacy. It had been the perfect place for young lovers, the perfect place to raise their son, and now - the perfect place to grieve in peace.

But her son William would come home in just a few days, filling the house with surly energy, ever-present since Rick died. Angela loved her son dearly - she needed him - but the thought of shouldering his sorrow as the anniversary of Rick’s death approached seemed like more than she could bear when she could barely hold her head above her own current of grief.

The moon hanging over the river slowly stepped from its cloudy veil and suddenly the back yard seemed brighter; the sweeping white marble steps that led from the house to the river bank gleamed pearl-bright against the turned earth beds. Tendrils of mist curled in sharply defined swirls upriver, wafting into view from behind the thick brush choking the bank. As Angela watched, the fog coiled ghostly fingers past her minimalist boat launch, spilling over the muddy shore and onto the thin patch of lawn at the base of the stairs. It moved onto her property almost like a sentient creature, taking a sharp left onto the lawn and flowing up the steps like a lady dancing, tripping in gay swirls and eddies.

The trees by the shore suddenly caught her attention. They glimmered white and green as something traveled upstream with the speed of a motorboat, though the only sounds wafting across the water were crickets and the low call of a distant horned owl. “Whoever could that be at this time of night?” Angela murmured. She walked like a ghost, robe fluttering as she waded down the stairs through the ankle deep fog. Something glowing and gorgeous swam upriver, water parting in deep black furrows around the silvery bright thing. She walked faster now, down the steps to the waterlogged lawn until she made out flaring nostrils, a long equine nose, and two ears flagged up in alert focus as it turned and swam towards the shore.

The river swirling by her house was complex; eddies and secret pools dotting the fast moving current. The horse passed easily through them all, and strode onto the shore. Its flanks glimmered, shimmering with water droplets like diamonds on a white field.

Angela hadn’t ridden a horse in years; she hadn’t owned horses for even longer. But - oh - she desperately wanted to ride this horse. The beast whuffled softly as it stepped through the long marshy grasses and approached her at the base of the stairs.

“Hello, beautiful,” she whispered, holding out her hand. This close, light danced on her palm, reflected from the horse’s pelt - or emanating from within. The horse lowered its massive head and lipped at her outstretched palm. Its nose felt cold and wet, spiked with bristly hair that scraped at her skin, and all around hung the pervasive stench of river weeds left too long in the sun. The horse turned its head and examined her with one placid eye. Then it dipped low to the ground, back bowing like a serpent.

Bliss washed over Angela once she met the horse’s gaze. She understood what it was asking and she thrilled to obey. She grabbed a fistful of its mane and pulled herself astride. Her legs, her hands, everything in contact with the horse thrummed with energy. “I’ll never let you go,” she whispered in its ear, ecstatic. “You’ll be mine forever, and I’ll be yours.”

The horse tossed its head and bellowed a gurgling whinny. Then, in one quick motion it wheeled towards the water, trotting into the shallowly rooted weeds. The horse hesitated for a bare moment where the river dropped off, then it dove swiftly beneath the river’s surface. Silvery light shone weakly from its depths like the reflected flash of a falling meteor and then it, too, disappeared into the slow, black current.

The fog lifted as suddenly as it had arrived. The shore behind Angela Somerset’s house was once again quiet and still and empty.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam Winchester lay in his bed in the bunker unable to move, eyes open to the ceiling, mud surrounding his body in a wet embrace. Over him flowed water: fast, murky, choked with silt and chunks of leaf litter. He tried to swim to the surface but his arms would not move. Sam opened his mouth to call for help. Water crept into his mouth slowly, slyly, like a dog curling into a stolen bed. His mouth became a well, overfull. The water rose higher, brushing the ceiling until the concrete fell away under its inexorable force. He would need to breathe soon. He would need to breathe and that would be the end. It was almost a relief now, knowing death was imminent.

“Sam? Sam!”

Sam woke with a long, desperate inhale. The vision of water lingered like heat haze, smearing the bookshelves into blurs, and he blinked desperately to clear his eyes. “Cas!” he gasped, reflexively grabbing at the library table. His heart felt like a hummingbird trapped in his chest and, embarrassed, he looked down and away from Castiel’s concerned expression. He’d fallen asleep in the bunker’s library. Guiltily he used one hand to wipe at a small puddle of spit that had gathered on the wooden table. His other hand rubbed self-consciously at his mouth and he yawned. “Sorry, man. Guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” He slowly shook his head as Castiel pulled out a chair next to him and sat down.

“You were talking in your sleep.” Castiel’s eyes were soft with concern. “Are you okay?”

Sam realized he was white-knuckling the edge of the table and he forced his body to relax. “Yeah, man.” Meeting Castiel’s gaze felt too intense, as though he could see into his mind. Maybe he could; they never talked much about Castiel’s range of powers these days. He rolled his neck, taking the excuse to look away as he rubbed his shoulder wearily. “Not sleeping in a bed makes the sleep pretty light, man. I was having a pretty vivid dream,” he confessed.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nah.” Sam leaned back in his chair and looked around. “Where’s Dean?”

“He’s picking up pizza. I expect he’ll return soon.”

“Good.” Sam nodded, the dream still clinging to his skin like water weeds. “I’m starving.” He stood up and made the excuse of heading to the bathroom, feeling Castiel’s gaze burning into his back as he retreated.

He shut the door to the bathroom and turned on the tap, filling his cupped hands with water before splashing his face and scooping a little more to rinse the metallic taste from his mouth. He spat and smacked his lips a few times. The bunker’s water tasted like roses - a side effect, Castiel once explained, of the bunker’s warding spells. The taste grounded him and he leaned both hands against the ancient sink and stared into the rust-spotted mirror.

_ That dream. _

Sam accepted long ago that terrible dreams just came part and parcel with being a Winchester. You had to see truly awful things in life for your dreams to claw you open while you slept. But it had been a long time since one had felt so intense - so real.  _ Not since Jess. Not since the apocalypse.  _ The thought swam up and Sam immediately pushed it back down. No. No, this couldn’t be like his old visions. Horror swelled like bloat in Sam’s gut and he ducked his head, panting over the sink. What if he was still broken? What if this dream was actually a vision? Sam clutched the edge of the sink.

_ I've been in the bathroom too long.  _ Even Castiel with his astonishingly poor grasp of social cues would be growing suspicious. Sam took one deep, shuddering breath after another until his heartbeat steadied. Then he took a towel from the industrial metal shelf bolted to the tile, wiped the remaining water from his face, and prepared to face Castiel’s penetrating gaze once more.

When he got back to the library Sam practically buckled in relief at the sight of Dean throwing open a box of pizza on the nearby map table. If there was one thing guaranteed to siphon attention from him, it was having Dean and Castiel in the same room together. “Sam!” Dean called out. “Just in time.” He grabbed a slice of pizza and gestured with it in greeting, and a pile of cheese soaked meat slid off of it onto the table. “Shit.” He dropped his slice onto the lid of the pizza box and pinched the fallen toppings with his fingers, dropping them into his mouth. “You were out like a light,” he said as Sam grabbed for his own slice of pizza. “And, you know, twitching like a dog having a dream. I’m telling you, man. You gotta stop falling asleep on books. They’re gonna fuck up your sleep.”

Sam rolled his eyes, settling in a chair opposite Dean. “Okay. One. Falling asleep on books won’t ‘ruin’ my sleep. It’s not like they’re leaching into my brain via osmosis. And two.” He took a bite and chewed slowly before conceding. “Okay, I don’t have a second. Anyway, what’s with the pizza? I thought you were going to make a full on roast chicken tonight.”

Dean cracked open a beer and leaned back, kicking his feet onto the map table. “Forgot to thaw the chicken.” He rolled his eyes at Castiel who had settled next to him at the table, hands folded next to an unopened beer bottle. “I wanted to use a blowtorch but Mr. Safety Marshall over there,” he jerked a thumb at Castiel, “wouldn’t let me.”

“Just trying to keep you from burning the place down. I can save you and Sam but I can’t save a whole bunker.” Castiel glowered at him, then reached over for his own piece of pizza, jostling Dean’s feet off the table. Dean’s chair tipped forward abruptly and the look on his face was so stunned that for a moment, all Sam could do was sit and laugh at his brother. 

Dean took an aggressive bite of pizza then grinned at Castiel with an enormous wad of food jammed into his cheek. “You’re no fun.”

Castiel’s once over of Dean was so quick, so subtle, that in the past Sam would have discounted it as nothing. Now, he snorted when Castiel said, seriously, “I’m a lot of fun,” and Dean’s ears turned pink.

“Dorks,” Sam said, happiness now bubbling alongside the beer in his belly.

“Mom texted me while I was out,” Dean said in the faux casual tones he usually dragged out for Mary.

“Yeah? How is she?”

“Hunting something in Canada, if you can believe it. Didn’t even know she knew anyone up there.”

Sam laughed. “Mom’s full of surprises. And she did walk away with the Men of Letters’ entire North American hunter database. I swear half of the hunters I talk to nowadays use her cell for their credential checks.”

Dean snorted. “No kidding. Woman needs a vacation.”

Castiel arched a brow at Dean. “You should talk.”

Dean raised his hands in mock outrage. “What’s it look like I’m doing right now?” Dean’s phone rang and he dug it from his pocket muttering, “Speak of the devil…” But his expression changed from his usual wary eagerness with Mary to a large grin. He answered the call with a drawled, “Well. Hey there, Donna. Long time no see.” He pressed a button on the screen and set the phone in the center of the map table. “Got you on speaker, Donna. Sam’s here. And Cas.”

“Hey, guys! How the heck are ya?” Sheriff Donna Hanscum’s voice crackled over the line enthusiastically.

“Doing great, Donna. How are things with you?” Sam asked.

“Oh good, good. Well, ya know. Not great.”

“What’s going on?” Dean asked, resting his elbows on the table and hunching forward.

“Well, looks like we got a vampire kicking up trouble. Could be a loner. We’re not sure.”

“Vamps?” Sam asked, surprised. “Seems like all you folks get over your way are vampires.”

“Right?” Donna laughed shortly and it sounded as tense as Sam had ever heard from the usually sunny Sheriff. “I could do with a few less vampire cases for sure.”

“Their network’s been a little weird since the Men of Letters take-down,” Dean said, rubbing a finger thoughtfully across a smear of grease on his chin. “Could be some kind of evac route heads through your area.”

“Hoboy, wouldn’t that be swell,” Donna said with a groan. “Anywho, the reason I’m calling’ ya is… Well, there’s no great way to put this but my hands are tied a bit lately. Huntin’ wise.”

Sam frowned at the phone. “What’s going on, Donna?”

Her sigh crackled over the phone. “Nothin’ I can’t handle, in general. But, this vamp case has been a tough nut to crack. Thought the first one might’ve been a drifter just passing through but after the next coupla bodies— And now… Well, boys. They’re going after kids, whoever they are.”

“Shit.” Dean sat back and Sam could practically see the gears turning in his head: how soon they could head out, what equipment they’d need, what they’d have to do to the bunker before taking off.

“No kidding. Had three gone missing so far only to show up just a few days later dead drained. Whoever’s taking ‘em left the victims in city parks. Like they’re openly taunting us. But we haven’t been able to track down a single solid lead - supernatural or otherwise. Another kid was declared missing yesterday. The only reason it came on my radar was on account of an eyewitness report of a - and I quote - ‘crazy guy with scary teeth driving a creepy van’. Everyone else just laughed it off as some kid story but…”

Sam shook his head. “Wow. That’s like every child predator PSA rolled into one. Send us everything you’ve got. We’ll look it over on our way there.”

“Yep.” Dean said. ”We can be there maybe mid-day tomorrow? Jump in, boots on the ground right away.”

There was a gusty sigh from the phone. “I appreciate it, boys. Sam, I’ll get you the files real soon.”

“Yep, see you tomorrow, Donna.”

Dean hung up the phone and the meal broke apart with military efficiency. Castiel cleared off the food while Dean and Sam headed to their rooms to grab their duffle bags. Sam threw a few clean shirts and pants and a week’s worth of underwear and sock changes into his bag. He grabbed his laptop and charger, made sure he had a book to read in the down time, and zipped the bag shut. The circumstances were horrible - they were always horrible - but it felt good to have a case. In the scramble to leave for a hunt, it was hard to dwell on such ephemeral things as weird, watery dreams and the specters of old fears.

They regrouped in the library. Castiel held a foil package in one hand, the book of lore he’d been reading in the other. “Pizza,” he explained to Sam’s questioning look, holding up the foil. Dean snatched it from his hands.

“Fuck yeah. I’m still starving.”

Sam rolled his eyes and aimed a kick at his brother on principle. They headed for the garage, and Minnesota.

~~~~~~~~~~

The vampire came out of nowhere, or at least it seemed that way. The moldy hunting cabin Donna tracked him to seemed to lack any actual light fixtures and the furniture was stacked high with boxes and towers of newspapers and rat-infested blankets. Donna swung her blade at its neck - might as well go for beheading on the first try - but the vampire jerked backwards and disappeared behind a stack of half disintegrated cardboard boxes. Something fell to the floor with a clatter and Donna slid into a deep crouch as she prowled towards the source of the noise.

She tried to step lightly, acutely aware that the monster she hunted didn’t need to see or hear her to know her general vicinity. The vampire could smell her and in these close quarters it could likely pinpoint her location easily with just a tiny bit of extra information.

A stack of brittle newspapers and a metal dish rack careened into her path. “Son of a sunset,” she exclaimed and stumbled backwards. The vampire lunged for her over the debris, ducking the machete and grabbing for her knee. Her leg buckled at the pressure and she fell onto the grimy floor as the monster twisted and snarled at her, clawing its way up her body with its fingers outstretched for her throat. She managed to work her other leg under the vampire and pushed at it hard. Donna drove the sharp point of her elbow into its face. His nose cracked satisfyingly and she used the brief moment when the vampire blinked, stunned, to scramble up and kick it in the face again. Blood poured from his nose and the corner of his mouth and she raised the machete up -  _ no time for hesitation, Donna _ \- and brought it down on his neck in one clean, powerful stroke.

The vampire’s head rocked away from its body and came to rest against a table leg in a scuffled mess of torn newspaper and dirt. She crouched for a moment over the monster, trembling with adrenaline. As far as she had been able to determine, the vampire was a solo predator whose main  _ modus operandi  _ appeared to be kidnapping, terrorizing, and then killing children. Still, she waited for a moment as she caught her breath, ears tuned for any sounds that might indicate an approaching attacker. After a moment she heaved a long breath and muttered as she flipped the machete away, “and that’s why I do flippin’ crossfit.” Donna pushed herself up and away from the vampire and, machete still raised in caution, disappeared into the depths of the cabin on her search for the young boy who had been kidnapped barely 72 hours earlier.

She found the little boy alive but weak, locked in a small, windowless bathroom. He lay curled in the cracked teal bathtub, head pillowed in his thin arms. She carefully stroked his cheek, worried that she was too late and the vampire had already killed him. He opened his eyes at her touch and flailed back for a moment, limbs clattering against the ceramic.

She withdrew her hand. “Heya,” she said soothingly. “You're okay now, you’re safe alright? Hey, Derek?”

The boy’s brown eyes took a moment to focus on her face and she saw some of the panic begin to recede, replaced by wariness. He’d been held captive for a few days now and by the marks on his throat, fed from at least a few times. And now there was another flannel-clad white stranger crouching in front of him with unknown intentions. It was times like these that Donna wished she could swoop in under the mantle of the Sheriff’s Department. The badge wasn't a comfort to everyone, but in a world which suddenly contained monsters it was usually an anchor to normalcy that she could throw to terrified victims.

“Derek,” Donna said slowly and quietly. “You’re safe. I’m gonna help you now.” She held out her hand, palm up, and waited patiently as he looked at it like it was a scorpion.

“The bad man will come back,” Derek whimpered.

She clicked her tongue in sympathy. “I sent the bad man away, Derek. He won’t hurt you ever again.” His eyes darted over her shoulder, around the small room, and into the dark hallway beyond. Donna kept her hand out and waited. Eventually, the boy took it and tried to stand. His knees buckled as his face took on an even more ashen hue. He was breathing heavily and it might have been from panic, but his lips and face were gray and he looked like he could barely focus on her. She hoped her expression stayed neutral but fear shuddered through her as she gave him a swift examination. He’d lost too much blood and appeared to be in shock. How badly he’d been hurt, or whether there would be any lasting organ damage from the blood loss, would have to be assessed at the hospital.

“Whoa, hey, it’s okay. Mind if I carry you? We’ll go out to my car. I’ll drive you to a hospital and we’ll call your parents right away, okay?”

His face crumpled and he nodded, throwing his arms suddenly around Donna. Her heart twisted and she picked him up and carried him easily through the cabin. She kept his face turned away from the body lying on the living room floor and held the machete in the hand tucked under his knees where he couldn’t see the red streaked blade.

Donna carried Derek out to her truck and arranged him in the passenger seat, carefully peeling his arms from around her neck and buckling him in where he slumped against the seat. She slipped the bloody machete behind the front seat in between the layers of a tarp she kept around for hunting.

Donna's truck was equipped with a bolted-in rifle locker and a deer rack hanging off the back. She considered for a moment heading back into the cabin and rolling up the vampire’s body in a tarp, sticking it in her truck bed, and trying to bury it in the small hours of the morning. Arson was out of the question for a cabin in the middle of an old pine plantation in the height of fire season.

Derek slumped in his seat, eyes slipping closed, and she felt for his pulse. It felt weak and thready. If she were in a city center she’d be tempted to user her burner cell to call for an ambulance and wait in the shadows until an ambulance came for him and she could take care of the body while the local cops were otherwise occupied. He surely wouldn’t be lucid enough to remember his rescuer clearly. But out here medical care was far away. By the time an ambulance arrived she would have already been able to make it to the hospital herself. Derek needed care and he needed it immediately. Making up her mind, she started up the truck and roared off down the dirt road towards the nearest hospital.

“Stay with me, kiddo. Okay?” She glanced at the little boy in her passenger seat. He sat wedged in the corner of his seat and the truck door, his head rolling with the bouncing truck. “Stay with me.”

She called up the hospital as she drove, wanting them to be ready the moment she arrived. That arranged, she called the Washington County dispatch and filled them in on the basics: she’d noticed a suspicious vehicle matching one mentioned in a witness statement while she’d been out duck hunting. She’d followed the lead to the cabin, found the presumed kidnapper recently dead, found Derek, and was currently en route to get him help. She left it at that, needing time to come up with an explanation for the beheaded body left behind that wouldn’t send the average resident running in fear. The brutal details would be suppressed by her crack team who, while not entirely clued in to the supernatural, were becoming almost inured to the weird corpses and odd medical reports coursing through the morgue in the past few years.

She looked towards the next few days, surely filled with unsatisfying explanations and subterfuge, with gloomy anticipation. Having no ties to a community really simplified the aftermath of hunts. Leaving puzzled law enforcement to clean up bloody bodies and tag mysterious evidence and moving on to the next town seemed almost poetically easy. 

Donna felt stretched thin and terribly exposed, desperate to protect both local residents from deadly monsters and her job. She could have waited another day for the Winchesters and Castiel. She could have - but then another child might have died. Donna tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Next to her the boy wheezed weakly and she pressed her foot to the floor. Her truck tore down the dark highway.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Washington County Sheriff’s Department was housed in a massive glass and brick law enforcement center in the heart of Stillwater, surrounded by staid greenery and quiet homes. It was a grand complex, a fortress, and Castiel had difficulty reconciling its imposing edifice with the picture Dean had painted of Donna. To hear Dean speak of her, Castiel had expected to finally meet the Sheriff in a timeworn but adorable station deep in the heart of rural Minnesota. Instead she had charge of a large county force that oversaw bedroom communities flourishing around the Twin Cities.

The hurricane of cheer which greeted them in the neat, modern lobby was entirely in line with his expectations, however. Donna greeted them with wide open arms, drawing Sam and Dean into her orbit immediately.

“Dean! Sam!” she exclaimed, her face lit with a joyous smile as she pulled them each into bone crushing hugs. “So good to see ya again.”

Sam laughed and patted Donna’s shoulder before ceding the hug to Dean who folded her into his embrace with an open affection he displayed for few people. Donna met Castiel’s eye over Dean’s shoulder and her eyes seemed to twinkle. He knew without needing to sift through the surface thoughts in her mind that he would be next. Donna slapped Dean’s shoulder with friendly affection and then she approached Castiel. She looked him over with a lightning quick flick of her eyes and then settled her hands on his shoulders. “And you must be Castiel,” the Sheriff said, dimples creasing her cheeks.

“I am.” Castiel looked up at Dean for a moment, not sure what the protocol should be. He was unused to meeting hunters as affectionate and  _ happy  _ as Donna appeared to be. He smiled at her, a little clumsily, and she rewarded his smile by pulling him down for a hug. “I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like I know ya,” she said, thumping his back soundly before pulling back and cocking her head. “You’re taller than I expected.”

Castiel scowled and looked at Dean who had settled back on his heels, thumbs in his belt loops, watching the exchange with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Why do people always say that?”

“Hey,” Donna said. “Come on back to my office, guys. I’ll fill ya in.” They trailed after her as she wound her way through the buzzing lobby. She led them down a short hallway and pushed open massive glass doors emblazoned with the Washington County Sheriff Department shield. Uniformed officers and workers dressed in civilian attire filled the room, occupying a hive of desks and offices tucked around the perimeter. “This here’s our new nerve center,” Donna announced proudly, gesturing at a wall of monitors displaying news feeds, mugshots, and case data. “Finally finished the remodel this year.” She shook her head. “I’ll tell ya nothing was more frustratin’ than inheriting a communications network from the eighties. I coulda gone home and had faster internet. But now…” She heaved a happy sigh. “It’s real good, dontcha think?”

“It looks amazing, Donna,” Sam said.

“It looks very efficient,” Castiel offered, thinking about his own earthly command centers in the past. Looking around the department gave him a little pang, like glimpsing an old friend with whom he’d lost touch.

Donna grinned and stood for a moment, gazing around at her staff. “It is. I’m real proud of these people here. Anywho,” she gestured towards a large office along the glass paned wall. “Let’s hop into my office for a little privacy.” As they passed by a young man sitting at a desk just outside her door she said, “Bob, can ya hold my calls? These agents stopped by for the Aikins case. Gonna fill ‘em in on the latest since they came all the way out here.” The man nodded at them and smiled politely, eyes widening slightly as his gaze traveled over their crisp black suits, clearly impressed by what Dean lovingly described as their “FBI swagger.” Donna ushered them inside her office and closed the door, gesturing to the soft seats positioned at casual angels in front of a wide, wooden desk.

Dean and Sam settled into the seats and Castiel perched against the shining black windowsill, morning sun warming his back. His suit jacket brushed against two large spider plants standing on either end of the ledge like wild-haired sentinels. Donna avoided her large desk chair, choosing instead to lean against the front of her desk, legs crossed casually at the ankle. She shook her head and shot them a rueful smile. “Guys, I’m real glad to see you, but I warned ya last night that this case is probably closed.”

Dean sat forward in his chair. “Yeah, well. The key word here is ‘probably.’”

Sam nodded and brushed his hair away from his face. “We know, Donna. And thanks for calling us last night. But since you called us anyway--”

“We were already on our way up,” Dean continued smoothly. “‘Sides, it’s a chance to visit. We didn’t have anything else going on, anyway.” He managed to make the lack of monster hunts lately sound like a depressing situation and Castiel grinned at the floor. He and Dean were too much alike in that respect, both urging each other to pursue leisure activities and rarely following through on the other’s suggestion. 

Dean sagged back in his chair, dropping the last vestige of formal FBI agent pretense as he hooked his arms over the back. “Now you know we’re itching for the details, especially since you were so vague last night.” He pinned her with a scolding look before abruptly adopting a pitiful air. “But I gotta ask. Any donuts in these parts today? Been a long drive.” He sounded plaintive, as though they hadn’t just eaten breakfast at a diner a handful of hours ago.

“Got your back, Deano.” Donna pushed away from her desk and disappeared behind it for a moment. There was the sound of crinkling plastic and then she stood holding a large paper box. Castiel could smell the sugar from where he rested against the window. “I’ll set these out for the crew once you all have your fill. Treats don’t last very long in the office.”

Dean heaved a dramatic sigh. “Donna, you are the absolute best,” he said. He opened the box and pulled out a powdered sugar covered donut. Dean bit into the donut with a moan and sugar fell from his lips onto his black FBI suit. “Someone needs to give this baker a freakin’ key to the city. I’ve been lookin’ forward to these babies the whole drive.”

Donna laughed and offered the box to Sam, who took a plain glazed donut, and then to Castiel who declined with a polite shake of his head. “Yah, pretty sure they’re made outta fairy dust and magic rainbows.” She closed the box firmly and sighed in the general vicinity of her belt. “Been hittin’ the Pattibell Bakery a little too often these days, I’m afraid. That store’s both the best and the worst thing about Stillwater.”

Dean grimaced. “Naw,” he mumbled and more sugar fell out of his mouth. “This here’s brain food.” Donna smiled at his obvious enjoyment and shoved the box a few inches further away from her on the desk so that it sat right across from Dean.

“Dude,” Sam said. “Dean. Your jacket.” He made a face and brushed against the front of his own suit coat. Dean frown, looked down at his sugar-dotted lapel, and rolled his eyes before brushing at his collar. The white sugar blended into wavy gray streaks along the dark fabric.

“So tell us about this case,” Castiel said.

“Yeah,” Sam said, balancing his donut carefully to the side of his knee. “What exactly happened? You were kinda vague on the phone.” Donna filled them in on the details from the night before and Sam let out a low whistle. “Sorry you had to deal with that on your own, Donna.”

She shrugged. “Sure wasn’t the first time I’ve taken on a hunt around here. But this is the first time I had to save a victim directly and not be able to cover my tracks. Having to bring the boy straight to a hospital…” Donna shook her head. “I’m glad I did it. Had to do it, ya know? And he’s gonna be okay. Few more days in the ICU but the docs think he can come back from the damage. That poor kid.”

“You did good, Donna.” Dean said. “Can’t always get rid of the evidence.”

Donna screwed her mouth up. “Yah, I know.” She sighed. “It’s just complicated. I thought about wrapping up the body and takin’ him with but… Woulda had to stick around the hospital for a few hours with a body in the back of my truck.” She sighed. “Holy horse nuts that kid’s gonna have some trauma. There’s nobody around here that’ll believe him enough to help him. We really could use some monster trauma counseling.”

Castiel nodded slowly. “That does seem to be a common predicament in a society which disavows the existence of the supernatural.”

“Yep. What can ya do?” Donna spread her hands wide and shrugged before directing a finger at the Winchesters and Castiel. “Anywho. Boys. Since you’re here, why dontcha stick around a few days?”

Dean made a show of surveying Sam and Castiel before responding, “Yeah. Think we could swing some time off.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Donna. That sounds great. We’ve got nothing on the radar at all. It’d be great to have some time to catch up.”

They all turned to Castiel who started at the sudden attention. “I-- We should stay in town for a few days. Make sure your vampire problem is resolved?”

Donna beamed like noon-bright sunshine. “Great! You guys are gonna stay with me, now. I hope you haven’t booked a room?” When they shook their heads, no, she went on. “Now Jody tells me you’re real big fans of home cookin’. I’m afraid that won’t happen tonight.” 

She wrinkled her nose and leaned forward a little conspiratorially. “In fact, you should know that I’m not a gourmet chef like Jody is. Man. That woman can roast a chicken.” Dean and Sam both groaned a little in agreement. “Beyond that, I’ve gotta work a little late tonight. I could pick up a couple buckets of chicken on the way home, though.”

Dean sighed happily. “That sounds friggin’ amazing. That bakery don’t make pies, do they?”

“What, Pattibell’s?” Donna cocked her head. “Ya know, I’m not really sure. More of a cake gal myself.” She ignored Dean’s sharply indrawn breath. “But I’ll shoot ya their address. You can check it out for yourself. Or I’m happy to drop by on my way home tonight.” She nodded and hooked her hands on her wide belt. She frowned over at the phone on her desk upon which flashed with an insistent amber light. “Hokay, I hate to shoo you all outta here but this morning’s been a bit of a doozy. I still haven’t gotten to the paperwork from last night. Mind if I send ya out the door?” She reached into her pocket and handed a key to Sam. “Key to my place. Feel free to roll around Stillwater or just crash for a while. I’ll see ya around eight? Yeah?” She pulled out her phone and typed something into it. Moments later, Dean’s own phone pinged. “Pattibell’s,” she said with a grin at Dean. “Knock yourself out.”

Dean patted his pocket in satisfaction and then they all stood up. “It was nice to meet you, Donna,” Castiel said as he pushed away from the windowsill to join the Winchesters.

“Likewise.” Donna strode to the door and held it open for them. “Thanks for stopping by agents,” she said in a much brisker tone. As Castiel passed by, though, she leaned in and whispered. “I wanna hear everything.” Castiel paused in surprise and saw she was grinning at him again, dimples prominent and eyes sparkling.

“Ah, okay,” he managed a short nod before hastening after Sam and Dean. He found himself slipping into a half smile totally inappropriate for FBI cover. There was nothing repressed about Donna Hanscum. Her emotions bubbled so close the surface, they might as well be painted on a two story building. He could tell, for example, that “everything” was likely to span everything from personal details about his relationship with Dean to his near-eternal existence as an angel. It was likely going to be a long conversation and if this morning’s meeting was any indication, he was going to enjoy it. 


	2. Knights

Donna lived in a yellow house along the waterfront just outside of town. It felt more like a cottage than anything else, small and square with wide white shutters. Dean loved it immediately. He expressed his adoration by frowning at the lemon yellow walls, the jaunty flamingo in the front bed, and the tangled clump of mint in the front so tall it flopped over onto itself. “Huh,” he commented incisively, before following Sam inside. The interior was just as adorable, full of brightly colored furniture with a massive gun safe taking up an entire corner of the living room. Mounted ducks soared across one wall and Dean flopped into a chair facing the stuffed birds and rolled his fingers over his temples. “Not bad. I really needed to get the hell outta the bunker.”

Sam snorted, but didn’t disagree. He stuck Donna’s key back into his pocket and stashed his duffel into the corner by the gun locker.

“I didn’t find the bunker overly taxing,” Castiel said mildly, setting down a fresh box of donuts and a boxed pie, before wandering towards the wall of mounted ducks.

“Yeah, well. You possess the patience and fortitude of an angel,” Dean said, quoting a slim chapbook he’d recently dug up in the bunker library on angel lore - mostly useless except to needle Castiel. Castiel scowled in reply and brushed his fingers over an upswept mallard wing.

Sam had settled onto the couch, already pulling out his laptop. He looked at Dean and grimaced as he explained, “Was gonna get a little research in before we head out for lunch.”

Dean ground his palms into his eyelids, trying to decide if the sting meant that he should sleep or if he could revive himself with a cup of strong coffee. Night-long drives took more of a toll these days than he was entirely prepared to accept. “Dude. Research what?” he asked, dropping his hands to his knees with a sharp slap. “I swear, Sam. Turn it off once in a while.” Sam responded by hunching over his computer, flipping back his hair, and ignoring Dean.

“Okay, well. Whatever.” Dean stretched out in the padded chair, letting himself melt into the cushions. “Man, we gotta get some couches or something for the bunker. I’ll tell ya what. This is the way to live.” Cas turned away from the ducks and leveled a stern look at Dean.

“Sleeping there is bad for your back.”

“Eh.”

Castiel crossed the room, took Dean’s hand matter-of-factly, and tugged him to standing. “We’ll be in the guest room,” he said to Sam who tried unsuccessfully to hide his smile behind his laptop.

Dean thought about protesting the treatment, complaining that he wasn’t tired. But that really would be a childish move, particularly since he was exhausted. In addition to the overnight drive, he hadn’t gotten a ton of sleep the prior night, thanks to a certain grounded angel. A year ago he would have gruffly complained about being mother henned and stomped off to mainline caffeine. But Castiel had been helping him dismantle his walls, defusing his issues and setting them gently aside, piece by blackened piece. Dean tightened his fingers in Castiel’s grip and allowed himself to be pulled into a small, sparsely decorated guest room. He closed the door behind him and lingered in front of the doorway for a moment, looking expectantly at Castiel. “You stickin’ around?”

Castiel turned towards him, one brow lifted cooly. “You should rest, Dean.” He betrayed himself by dropping his eyes to the patch of skin visible under Dean’s collar.

“Uh huh.” Dean, energy suddenly spiking through him at Castiel’s warm gaze, slid his hand up Castiel’s arm, curling his fingers into his suit jacket. He ran his other hand under the other lapel, then slid both hands back, slowly revealing Castiel’s broad shoulders. He pulled the jacket down until it caught at Castiel’s elbows, loosely pinning his arms at his side. Dean moved one hand to Castiel’s waist and wound his other hand in Castiel’s tie. He tugged, gently.

Castiel moaned and swayed forward a little so Dean pressed his advantage, leaning in until their breath ghosted together. “‘M not tired,” Dean whispered.

“No?”

“I’m hungry.” Still gripping Castiel’s tie tightly he backed him towards the small bed, dropped one hand to his belt and tugged at the buckle. Then he slid his hand down to palm Castiel’s half hard cock, eyes never leaving Castiel’s. He licked his lips deliberately and smiled when Castiel mirrored him, seemingly unaware of doing so. If Dean’s walls had fallen over the past year, it was nothing compared to what he’d achieved with Castiel's Heaven-sourced hangups.

“Okay. Okay,” Castiel said breathlessly, shrugging out of his coat, fingers flying to undo the buttons of Dean’s shirt. Dean unbuckled Castiel’s belt and opened his pants, tugging Castiel’s shirt up and out of the way so he could brush his thumb against Castiel’s rapidly filling cock. For a moment Dean just leaned his forehead into Castiel’s shoulder so he could watch his thumb tease at Castiel’s slit. And then he pushed at Castiel’s hip with barely enough force to slide a book across a table, and Castiel fell back onto the mattress.

Castiel leaned back on his elbows with an easy grin, shirt bunched up over his tight stomach, zipper undone, and a lovely rose flush of excitement painting his skin. Dean paused for a moment to enjoy the sight of Castiel illuminated by mid-day sun, that lopsided grin still on his face. _He’s happy._ Dean had died and been resurrected countless times. He’d traipsed through Heaven, stood in the throne room, met God himself. But knowing he made Castiel happy was a miracle he still wasn’t used to. Reverently, Dean dropped to his knees, wedging himself between Castiel’s thighs. He winked at Castiel, flicked his tongue across his lips, and closed his mouth around Castiel firm length.

Castiel rewarded him with a hoarse, “Dean,” hips jerking at the sensation. Dean swirled his tongue around the head, slid one hand up to caress his balls and the delicate crease of his thigh, and opened his own pants with the other.

Dean liked to moan, liked to talk dirty, slap skin and rattle shelves. Sound traveled readily in the bunker, but a little Enochian warding was all it took to command silence and create a bubble of safety where Dean and Castiel could burn each other up. On hunts Sam learned to get his own room - and ask for a gap of a few rooms just to give everyone involved a little privacy. But Sam sat in the living room just a short hallway away. And though he’d likely donned headphones by now (Sammy wasn’t stupid) there was something about sex in a guest bedroom - as a guest - that quieted Dean. He was quiet as his tongue worked over Castiel. He was quiet as his hand chased his own pleasure.

Castiel clutched at Dean’s hair, his body burning hotter than any human, and gasped a breathless litany into the still air of the sun dappled room. When he finally let go, he pulsed into Dean’s mouth hot and wet and deep. Dean stilled his tongue as Castiel shuddered around him. He breathed through Castiel’s tremors before pulling his mouth away with a long, gentle lick. Minute shivers still rang along Castiel’s body as his fingers ran slowly down to circle the nape of Dean’s neck. “Good?” Dean asked quietly.

“So good.” They breathed quietly together, lost in the moment, then Castiel plucked at Dean’s shirt, directing him to stand. He pulled Dean onto the bed and pressed him back into the soft coverlet. Dean arched and gasped at the aggressive onslaught of sensation as Castiel brought Dean to his own bliss.

Afterward they lay pressed against each other, the back of Dean’s fingers idly sweeping over the lines of Castiel’s stomach. “You sticking around?”

“Until you fall asleep. I wanted to walk along the river.”

“Nature hike, huh?”

“Curiosity. Bodies of water are fascinating things, you know. They’re full of--”

“Mmph. You don’t really think I’m gonna sleep, do you?” Dean yawned, despite himself. “Keep your phone on, man.”

“Of course, Dean.” Castiel pressed his lips to Dean’s shoulder and brought up his other hand to comb through Dean’s hair. Quicker than he would ever admit, Dean slipped into sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are things Castiel needs and he takes those greedily these days. The sun warm on his face - the smell of the Earth. The disbelieving smile of someone he’s healed. And he’s discovered a bottomless need for touch which gets satisfied at night in the push and slide of Dean’s body or the almost holy sensation of synchronized breath and tangled limbs as Dean sleeps beside him. Sometimes he even joins Dean in sleep.

Resting, chasing dreams is a learned skill, though he could never manage it for long. He had become accustomed to ceaseless work over the course of a millennia, his life a series of interconnected dots, straight lines drawn from the beginning of a mission to its end. Castiel covered Dean with a light blanket and left him snoring quietly on the bed. He put himself to rights and then emerged from the bedroom, nodding at Sam. “I’m going for a walk.”

Sam looked up briefly from his computer. “Cool, man. We’ll be here.”

Castiel walked through the small kitchen and slid open the back door that led to the porch. Summer hung thick on the river, cicadas whirring a constant song up in the trees, ghostly clouds of insects dancing over the surface of the water. He paused for a moment and inhaled deeply, drawing in the alluring scent of the river.

Donna’s backyard was small, a rectangle of grass bracketed on one end by a modest wooden porch and on the other by the wide, brown river. Castiel took in another deep lungful, his grace-enhanced body disassembling the scent clinically even as he reveled in the simple odor of earthy water. The river pressed wide, languid this close to Stillwater. A light breeze tousled his hair and teased the water into sun-lined ripples. Castiel walked through the overgrown grass and stooped at the river’s edge. Donna kept the shoreline wild and the tall cordgrass half concealed Castiel as he crouched to dip a few fingers into the water. He frowned, then pushed his sleeve higher up his arm and plunged his entire hand into the water. Castiel hummed thoughtfully, then drew his hand to his mouth and licked the water from it.

 _What a strange taste._ Castiel ran his tongue over his river-wet lips and sucked on them, mulling over the character of the water. This river had magic coursing through it, cool and strange. Magic sings through every river in the world, of course. Every lake and every pond has its own energy. But this magic felt almost sentient.

“Who are you?” Castiel whispered to the water. The taste of white-gold longing saturating the water lingered on his lips and his chest ached in sympathy. He tilted his head thoughtfully, then squinted across the brackish water to the small homes densely packed along the bank. This magic felt strange, alien. _Could it be fae?_ “This is a strange place for the fae to settle,” he murmured, “so close to a city.” But a water fairy’s magic could be strong enough to infect the St. Croix. Perhaps there was a fairy kingdom settled deep in the muck, or an ancient creature buried in the silt, more river now than animal. Whatever it was, the magic had tugged at Castiel as soon as they’d arrived in Stillwater. A lopsided smile slipped over his face and he stared at the tadpoles darting through the brackish shallows, pleased to find a mystery after all.

~~~~~~~~~~

_The horse lay deep in the river bed, neck stretched in the soft muck, and shivered as an angel touched its water. It rested uneasily, twitching but hardly daring to move. Dark lines of magic crisscrossed the river like a spider’s web, penning it in while the current flowed over and around it. A young sturgeon swam close, four feet long and curious, and eyed its glittering flank hungrily. The horse snapped its teeth fretfully at the fish and it sprinted away in a flash of fin and scale. The river passed overhead, a dark and unchanging prison._

~~~~~~~~~~

Dean woke suddenly to the shrill ring of his cell phone. He winced and burrowed his head into the pillow. “No,” he said, sourly. It pinged cheerily, alerting him to a voicemail and he groaned before rolling over towards the end table which held his phone. “Hmm,” he said shortly, looking at the notification. “Donna.” Blearily, he thumbed it open and listened to the message before throwing off the blanket, swinging his legs off the bed, and pulling on his pants. He stumbled from the bedroom, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Sam hunched over his computer in the living room, a deep furrow in his brow. He jumped when Dean greeted him and Dean snickered. “Shoulda gotten some sleep, too, Sam. You look like shit.”

Sam made a face and closed his computer. “Didn’t expect you up yet.” He stretched his arms up over his head, shoulders cracking in the quiet room.

“Cas around?” Dean asked, aiming for a casual tone as though he really didn’t care where Castiel might be.

“Think he’s outside on the porch.”

“Good.” Dean slapped the phone in his hand. “‘Cause we gotta suit up. We got a case!”

“Wait, what? Where?” Sam closed his computer and began to stow it away in his duffel. “Vamps?”

“Nah. Donna’s not sure what it is, exactly. But she thinks she found a hex bag at a crime scene she’s checking out today.”

“What? Really?” Sam shook his head. “This town. So, witches?”

Dean hummed. “Could be. Right now they’re calling it an ‘accidental drowning.’”

Color drained from Sam’s face and he cleared his throat. “Drowning?”

“Yeah, man. But you know, if there’s smoke there’s fire, right? If Donna’s right and there is a hex bag then there’s some witchy son of a bitch running around this town.”

“Yeah...” Sam shook his head slowly and stared at his duffel bag for a moment.

Dean snapped his fingers in front of Sam’s nose. “Hey. Earth to Sam? You okay? You look a little weirded out.”

Sam exhaled sharply. “No. No, I’m fine.” He laid a hand across his stomach. “Just hungry, I think.”

Dean frowned at his brother. Whenever Sam avoided his gaze it meant trouble. But judging by the mulish set of his jaw, if he pressed Sam on the issue now he’d get nothing but evasion for his trouble. Sam had been jumpy for weeks now, startling at nothing, jumping when Dean walked into a room, staring off into empty corners like a lunatic cat. Dean put a pin in his curiosity then and he did so now, because they’d need to rush to the crime scene before detectives start boxing it up. But before the end of this trip, he vowed to get to the bottom of whatever was eating at Sam. “I told Donna we’re on our way.” He pointed a finger at Sam. “Get dressed. I’ll get Cas and we’ll suit up and be ready to go in a few. Whoever’s ready first makes sandwiches and we’ll eat on the way.”

Sam scowled and shook his head. “So, I’ll make the sandwiches then.”

Dean just grinned at Sam and headed out to the back porch to find Castiel. By the time Dean returned with Castiel in tow, his lips tingling deliciously, Sam was already in his suit making hasty turkey sandwiches in the kitchen. Dean went to the bedroom for his FBI jacket and tie, tucking in his shirt along the way, while Castiel went out to the Impala to bring in the box of witch killing bullets. By the time they regrouped in Donna’s living room, Sam had inhaled an apple and appeared, to Dean’s approving eye, to be back to his usual centered self. _Maybe he was just hungry_ , Dean allowed and set the problem aside in his mind. It would wait. For now, there were witches to hunt.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Somerset house sat high up on the river, five miles north of town in the company of sparsely spaced stately homes set well back from the road. The houses were barely visible through the trees, lending a feeling of quiet isolation to the house on top of the hill. Dean drove down Angela Somerset’s long driveway and parked next to a line of cars emblazoned with the Sheriff’s star. Dean turned off the car and drummed the steering wheel with his fingers. “Witches,” he muttered and leaned forward to tuck his gun into his waistband. “You getting anything, Cas?”

Castiel sat in the back seat, elbows hooked over the front seatback, his face screwed up in thought. “Maybe a...whiff of magic.”

“A whiff.” Dean rolled his eyes.

“What? Hex bags are too self-contained. I need to get closer to separate out the hex bag from other energies.”

“Well,” Sam said, opening his door and swinging out one leg. “Let’s get moving. Find Donna. I assume she’s keeping this bag out of the evidence pool?”

“Oh yeah. She said it’s in her pocket.”

Sam flinched. “That’s dangerous.”

“Told her as much myself but she told me, and I quote, ‘Deano, I’m not pushing up lilies yet. Just get your asses over here.’”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. The sooner we can take that thing apart the better, right?” Dean heaved a dramatic sigh before opening his door and following Sam and Castiel to the crime scene.

They found Donna in the back yard talking to an officer in a terraced garden bed several feet down from the edge of the house. The officer was a younger woman, dark hair bound in tight braids that swirled like intricate tree roots into a bun at the back of her head. She gestured sharply towards the river, her raised voice audible from the top of the slope. Donna spotted them when they rounded the house and lifted her hand, beckoning them over.

“Glad you could join us, agents. This is Sergeant Elk,” Donna said, greeting them with as straight a face as any good poker player. “She’s assisting our head detective with the investigation.”

“What’s the situation, Sheriff?” Dean asked, eyes flickering towards the agitated officer.

Elk squinted at the badge Dean flashed at her and her demeanor shifted. Her voice took on a less caustic tone when she said, “Angela Somerset’s body was found about fifty feet upriver this morning by her neighbor, Mrs. Whitcomb.” She pointed at an older woman standing on the porch in loud floral shorts, arms crossed as she talked to another officer. She shot a look at Donna before she said with a note of apology,” The body’s been moved on to the morgue but we’ve got photos.” She pulled a tablet from under her arm and unlocked it before handing it to Dean. Castiel, Dean, and Sam crowded around the device as Dean scrolled through the images.

In the photos Angela’s body lay like Ophelia. Her face rested just below the surface, features fractured by the swift current but still visible through the water. Her lips were parted peacefully; her eyes closed. A few stray arrowleaf sprigs and fragments of twigs tangled in her hair which flowed downstream. “She was snagged on a fallen tree,” Donna said, pointing out the bridgelike trunk that extended into the water and cradled Angela’s body. “Looks like she caught the root postmortem - likely early this morning.”

“The initial exam indicates no obvious injuries that may have contributed to her death. No head trauma, nothing beyond superficial scrapes,” Elk said, rubbing her palms along her pants. “But there is evidence that she was drinking. She might’ve decided to go for an evening swim.” She reached over and flipped through the photos until she arrived at a picture of the railing along the back of the house with a single half full wine glass sitting on it.

Castiel frowned at the photo, then looked at the river and the fast current squeezing through the cliff-narrowed channel. “She was found upriver? Did you find any evidence that she walked upstream before swimming?”

The sergeant shrugged, shifting uncomfortably. “No tracks through the woods. If she did head up that way she probably walked along the road. The ground’s real soft. We would’ve found footprints.”

“And then she would have had to access the water from private property,” Donna interjected. “Ya won’t find a public launch for about twenty miles.”

“Nobody reported seeing her but--” Elk wavered.

”Sergeant Elk,” Donna said, “thinks currents moved the body upstream.”

“How so?” Sam asked, wrinkling his brow at rippling river. “Looks pretty fast.”

“Some parts of the river have odd currents, eddies created by underwater obstructions. That sorta thing.” Elk looked at the men and shrugged apologetically. “Only a guess right now but I’ll tell ya, I’ve seen it happen before. Maybe the autopsy will tell us more. Also...” She glanced at Donna who nodded slightly. ”The initial inspection we did found some…odd things.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “What kind of odd stuff?”

“Some kind of hair under her fingernails. Looked like animal hair.” Her gaze shifted a little as though she were uncomfortable sharing this piece aloud.

Dean nodded thoughtfully. It definitely sounded weird. He itched to get Donna alone and get their hands on that possible hex bag. _Unknown hair under the nails…_ He turned over possibilities in his mind. Monsters of various stripes were always potential suspects, though they didn’t usually arm themselves with hex bags. And Somerset’s body wasn’t injured in any obvious way, though they’d want to visit the morgue themselves to determine that for sure. Law enforcement missed vital details all the time, simply because they weren’t accustomed to look for the clues that could point to a monster attack. If they were looking at a witch attack, hair could also belong to a witch’s familiar - in which case they could be searching for at least two suspects.

Dean met Sam’s eye and flicked a quick glance at the neighbor on the porch who was nodding and stepping away from the officer who’d been questioning her. Sam nodded almost imperceptibly and eased away from the group. He moved to intercept the neighbor before she left the scene. Hopefully Sam could tease any “unusual” details from the neighbor away from Donna’s staff. Witnesses were often more more likely to share odd information with non-local law enforcement.

Dean and Castiel flicked through the rest of the photos, Donna pointing out visible injuries - all apparently postmortem and easily caused by materials encountered in the river. Finally, Donna pulled up a close-up photo of the hair under Angela’s nails. There were indeed white tufts of hair jammed between her swollen skin and fingernails, rainbow-tipped from the camera flash reflecting off the water.

“Elk,” Donna said finally. “Can ya check how Sampson’s team is doing with the sweep of the house? ‘Bout time we start wrapping up.” Sergeant Elk nodded crisply and headed up the steps towards the house.

Dean whistled as soon as she was out of earshot. “Got a real earnest one there, Donna.”

Donna shot him a reproving look, removing the reading glasses she’d worn while examining the photos and sliding them back into one of her shirt pockets. “She’s a good one. I got high hopes for her. Sharp, so watch yourselves around her, boys.”

“So, tell me, Donna. Why’d you call us out here? Drowning, possibly accidental, possibly homicide? Either way, you don’t have a whole lot of supernatural evidence here other than some strange hair and a possible hex bag.” He looked around them to make sure there were no officers in earshot. “Speaking of which…”

“It is a hex bag,” Castiel said as Donna reached for her pocket. He looked around at Dean and Donna when she paused mid-reach, brows raised. “What? I could feel it as soon as I got close to it.” He rolled his eyes at Dean’s look of exasperation. “I couldn’t exactly say anything, could I?”

“Can you tell what it does?” Dean asked and then words left him. Donna held the hex bag out in her palm. It sparkled saucily in the golden evening light. “Uh,” Dean pointed at the object in her hand. “What the hell is that?”

“A hex bag,” Castiel and Donna said at the same time. It looked like a clumsily sewn stuffed animal, with two tiny, jaunty legs sticking out from the fore and aft of a round body. In profile it clearly had an elongated head, a tiny X sewn where an eye would be. The entire bag was made out of pink fabric studded with magenta sequins, large red stitches holding the edges together. A single piece of red yarn was tied in a knot around its middle.

“I found this shoved under the doormat,” Donna said, handing it over to Castiel to examine.

“That’s your hex bag?” Dean huffed. “Weirdest bag I’ve ever seen.”

Donna wrinkled her nose. “No kiddin’. I did a little research this morning on my phone once I thought it might be what I was lookin’ at. Doesn’t look anything like what I found on those hunter websites Jody sent me.”

Cas frowned. “The container has nothing to do with the power it holds.”

Dean snorted, patted Castiel consolingly, then plucked the bag out of Castiel’s fingers and frowned at it, turning it over in his hands. “Okay. So you found this…this bag. And somehow you got ‘hex bag’ out of it? How’d that happen? I mean, it--”

“Looks like a toy? I hear ya. You see, I’ve seen one of these before.”

“What? Where?”

Donna drew her mouth sideways in a grimace. “Been a lot of other drownings this year. One of ‘em was the nephew of a good friend and I wanted to talk to his family myself. And I saw one of these on the table next to the door just sittin’ on top of a pile of mail. It struck me as out of place at the time; it looked like a cat toy but he didn’t have any pets. Ya know, at the time I just shrugged it off. I never imagined it might have been part of the case.

“I’d forgotten about it until I saw this today.” She met Dean’s eye, her face crumpled in distress. “Two unexplained ‘accidental’ drownings, and a lot more than average drowning victims over the last 12 months. Then two of these sparkly deals show up? I dunno. It just feels...off to me.” She raised a finger and traced around the red yarn tied around the horse’s middle. “What made me call you right away, though, was this. Coupla those websites talked about the ‘red ribbon of fate’ and hex bags. Thought that might be what this was.”

Dean gave her a little grin even as he continued to turn the bag over in his hands. “Yeah, that’s what I’d call it, too. Good work, Donna.”

She looked pleased at the praise. “Thanks. So, Cas. You can sense the magic in this? Any idea what it’s for?”

“Hmm.” Castiel reached out for the pink horse again and drew the bag up to his nose, sniffing delicately along the seams. “Ah,” he sniffed again. “Lilac. Witchbane.” Another careful sniff of the head and he said, “There's some kind of dried pondweed but it’s hard to pick out just which one. Maybe a mix? There’s equine dung and fairy bones in there as well. The bones might be from a local tribe.” He took one last long inhale. “And, uh, coriander. We should pull it apart to be sure.”

“Wait, fairies are real?” Donna asked, eyes wide.

Dean recoiled from the hex bag. “Equine dung? Dude, there’s horse shit in there?”

Sam chose that moment to enter the conversation. “What’s this about horse shit?”

Dean plucked the bag from Castiel's hand and handed it over to Sam. He turned to Donna. “Fairies are absolutely real,” he affirmed to her obvious delight. “And they’re total dicks.” Then he turned to Sam, pointing at the hex bag he was carefully turning over in his hands. “And that has horse shit in it.”

Sam stopped fiddling with the hex bag and wrinkled his nose at it. “Thanks, Dean,” he said drily.

Dean chuckled while Castiel filled Sam in on the details of the hex bag. “So what’d you find out from the neighbor?” Dean asked.

“She hasn’t seen or heard anything unusual. No odd animal tracks. She did say that last night her dog was going absolutely crazy at the back door. She had to haul him to her basement and lock him inside before he stopped.”

“Something wicked this way comes. Okay, so hex bags equal witchy good times. Barking dog, weird hairs imply monster. Where does that leave us?” He started to tell them about his witch’s familiar theory but trailed off when another officer approached. Sam hastily pocketed the hex bag.

“Uh, Sheriff?” the officer said. “Sorry to interrupt but I wanted to let you know we found the security camera footage.”

Donna smiled. “Super. Thank you, Sampson. Can you get it set up for these folks and I’ll send ‘em your way in just a shake?”

“Sure thing. It’s upstairs, second door to the left.” Sampson said, tossing them a jaunty wave before turning back to the house.

“Perfect. Security feed,” crowed Dean. “Man, I love paranoid people. Let’s head on up.”

Castiel stepped back. “Actually, ah. I’d like to go look at where the vic was found.”

“The vic?” Donna asked, mouth trembling at the corners as though she couldn’t quite believe that word came out of the mouth of an angel.

“Yes.” Castiel nodded seriously, though his head tilted a little as though he detected her amusement. _Hell, he probably can,_ Dean thought. These days, Castiel grew exponentially more confident at interpreting human emotion. “I’d like to see if there are any clues your officers missed. Any…any traces of magic that might explain the hex bag, here.”

Sam cleared his throat. “Good call, man. I’d, uh, like to get in on that too.”

Dean looked between them for a moment and narrowed his eyes. Both Castiel and Sam were just a little too awkward, held themselves a little too stiffly. Sam wouldn’t look at him; his gaze rested just over Dean’s shoulder. Castiel kept squinting at the water. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Your loss. I’ll go check out the footage. Meet you back here? Call me if you find anything.”

Donna checked her watch. “And I’ve gotta clear out of here and back to the station. Check in with me when you’re done, okay?”

“Same, man.” Sam said and the four parted ways.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sampson met Dean in the home’s security center. The surveillance station took up a wide corner of a spacious office on the second floor; he’d loaded the security footage on two separate screens. “Back yard. Front yard,” the officer said, pointing to each feed. “Have at it.”

“Thanks,” Dean said and smiled as Sampson threw him a casual salute on his way back out the door. “Ah, Minnesota. So trusting,” he murmured, settling into the office chair and taking control of the mouse. “Okay, so vic was on the back porch drinking…” He hunched over the computer and began to scan through the feeds, struggling to keep his eyes from glazing over from staring at video of Angela plus nothing…nothing...

Dean sat up. On the screen, a slight figure in a dark hooded sweatshirt approached the front door. “Hello,” Dean murmured. “You sure look suspicious. Come on. Show me your face…” He looped through the footage a few times but slumped as he realized there was no clear shot; the figure had actually done a good job of obscuring their features from the camera. He pulled a flash drive from his pocket and inserted it into the computer, copying over all the clips that showed the hooded figure so they could go over it slowly back at Donna’s place. Then he texted Castiel so that he and Sam would know to meet Dean back at the car.

When Sam and Castiel returned, Sam’s shoes were soaked through and squelching with every step. Castiel was drenched up to his knees. Dean looked them up and down, torn between laughter and outrage at the thought of river water coating the leather seats that he had _just_ meticulously cleaned the week before.

Sam shot his hands up and pulled his best innocent expression. “I’ll keep my feet firmly on the mat, Dean.”

Castiel rolled his eyes, waggled his fingers in the general vicinity of his pant cuffs, and opened the passenger side door. He climbed into the Impala, clothing now completely dry. Sam huffed. “No fair,” he muttered before folding himself into the back seat. Dean chortled and headed around to the driver’s side. He started the car, nosed it away from the house, and started down the driveway before he said, “So, I think I got our witch on tape. There was exactly one skulking figure coming around in the last couple of days who walked up to the front door, disappeared from view for just a couple seconds, and turned right back around again.”

“Just enough time to slip something under the doormat,” Sam said. “That really does scream _witch_ , doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. I scanned the feed pretty closely, though. It doesn’t look like we’ve got a face for Donna’s people to run.”

“That might be okay,” Sam leaned his elbows against the back of the front seat. “Cas found something in the river.”

Castiel dug into his pocket. “I found this,” he said, holding up a very waterlogged, very familiar pink sparkly stuffed horse. “It was caught in some bracken near where Angela’s body was found.”

“Uh, okay.”

“It must have fallen from her pocket.”

“Yeah. Got that. So another sparkle pony of doom. So what?”

“So,” Castiel drawled, “it’s a little different from the first.”

“Different how?”

“Bones from some kind of pond fairy,” Sam said, his voice edged with excitement.

“And not just any pond fairy,” Castiel added.

“Okay, what is this? Torturous teeth pulling time? Bones of a pond fairy, a special, special pond fairy because…?”

“I know exactly where these came from. And I think it’ll help us find our witch even if we can’t get anything from the security feed.”

“No shit?” Dean rolled his shoulders back and rested an elbow on the back of the seat. “A. How the hell do you know where these bones are from? And two. How does that help us find the witch?”

Castiel looked out of the window briefly, then to his lap. “Hannah and I drove through the area looking for Sauriel when you— When she and I were bringing the angels back to Heaven. Sauriel was…cagey. We knew he was somewhere in Minnesota but were having trouble cracking his concealment spells.” Castiel shook his head ruefully. “We wandered all over the place, including a stop at Big Swan Lake where I believe,” he tapped at the hex bag in his hand with a careful finger, “I’ve met members of this tribe before.”

Dean tried and failed to suppress a shudder. “So we’re…what? Setting out to interview a bunch of fairies?”

“Nope,” Sam sounded positively ecstatic. “No need. Because there just so happens to be a hunting supply store really close by there in Long Prairie.”

“Wait. You mean hunting supplies? Like, hunting hunting?”

“Like _monster_ hunting, Dean.”

Dean looked at Sam in the rearview mirror. “How do I not know about this place?”

Sam gave a one shouldered shrug. “Wasn’t on my radar either, but the Men of Letters had it tagged from years ago. I pulled it up in the spreadsheet Mary sent to me. Cas and I figure if the bones originated in a single lake—”

“Fairies are highly insular,” Cas interjected.

“Then odds are that our witch bought them at a nearby hunting supply shop. I mean, it’s either that or she ordered ‘em on Amazon, right?”

“Huh. Well, alright. Let’s go found ourselves a bone dealer!”

“Yeah, not so fast,” Sam laughed. “You gotta drop me at the station, dude.”

“Seriously? Why?”

“Donna seemed real weirded out by the hair under the vic’s nails. I texted her and told her I’d meet her at the station. I really want to get a look at that body and see if there’s anything Donna’s people missed.”

Dean shrugged. They were just outside of town by now. It was easy enough to swing Sam by the station and head off to the distant Long Prairie. “Alright. Guess that’s a plan, then. Cas? You in?”

Castiel tossed him a happy half smile then settled back in the sun-warm seat like a pleased cat. “Of course.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Downtown Long Prairie, like many midwestern small towns, consisted of a single strip of prime main street realty before it gave up and became quiet residential homes. The address of the hunters’ shop Sam gave to Dean was on Main Street, sandwiched at the end of the block in between an empty storefront and a thrift store with sweater clad mannequins in the window. Dean parked in front of the thrift store and got out of the car, the Impala’s sleek reflection improbably superimposed against the ancient sequined knitwear hung in the shop window.

He squinted at the freshly painted facade of the store next door. Above it hung a sleek wooden sign that read _The Butterchurn_. The sign looked new, crisply detailed, and totally unlike half the stores on this street. Dean’s heart sank. “Hope this place is still in the hunting business. We may not have the time to dick around trying to find where the owners took off to.”

He approached the shop, Castiel trailing after him, and heaved a relieved breath when he saw the tiny hunter’s mark painted in the corner of the window. It looked too fresh to be overlooked in a remodel job, the lines carefully painted in thin white paint. He tapped it, drawing Castiel’s attention to it.

“Promising,” Castiel said, brushing past him to lead the way inside.

Dean’s frown returned once he stepped inside. The interior of the store looked downright wrong. The walls were white and lavender with delicate hand painted flowers and vines tracing the edges of the store. Sprays of fresh flowers in crystalline vases stood on crisp white counters and the blond shelves lining the walls were loaded with artfully placed jars with calligraphed labels. “Okay.” He looked back at the hunter’s mark in the window, then at Cas before shrugging. “This is...not what I was expecting.” He approached the counter where several small tubs sat in a neat row. A tiny scrollwork-framed chalkboard sign read SAMPLES. He picked one up, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed the lotion inside. “Huh. Well, this place might be an abomination of a hunter shop, but it smells nice.”

Castiel bent towards the tub when clacking footsteps sounded from the back of the shop. Dean stiffened and set the lotion back on the counter, hand straying warily towards the gun in his belt. A swinging door opened behind the counter and a smiling woman bustled in. “Can I help you?” she trilled. She reminded Dean of a Swedish doll fresh from a child’s tea party. Her pale hair was bound up in braids and wound around her head and she wore a white eyelet skirt with a lavender wrap shirt. Her eyes were deep, button-dark pools. As she took in her latest customers her smile faded. “Can I help you?” she repeated, her tone suddenly so cold that Dean wouldn’t have been surprised to see ice crystals crackle on her lips.

“Yeah,” Dean said, casually leaning against the counter and switching on his most charming smile. “I’m looking to buy some fairy bones.”

She pursed her lips and gave him a librarian stare. “What is that, slang for something?”

“Fairy bones,” Castiel repeated giving her his Columbo stare. “Specifically within a 10 mile radius of your store.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her tone was sweet but her glare sliced into them.

Dean looked up at her and his smile slipped. He nudged his flannel aside just a hair to reveal the hilt of a knife. “Come on. I know you cater to hunters. You’ve got the mark on the window. And don’t try to tell me you don’t know what that means. It’s way too fresh.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes, taking a step away from the counter. She pursed her lips at them for nearly a minute like she was playing an undeclared game of Chicken, then said, “What do you need fairy bones for?”

“Well,” Dean drawled, “that’s a good question now, isn’t it? We’re actually here to track down a buyer who might have bought some from you recently - past couple months, maybe?”

Her expression somehow blossomed into something even more hostile. “I don’t share customer information. Sorry, boys.”

“Listen--” Dean slapped his hands on the counter and leaned in threateningly.

Cas wrapped his fingers around Dean’s forearm. “Please. Ma’am. We’re trying to track down a killer, here.” Dean tamped down the urge to smile at Castiel’s conciliatory “good cop” tone.

She narrowed her eyes and looked between the two of them. “I can assure you, I’m very discerning about my clientele.” She stepped backward and threw her hand onto a violet mosaic set in the wall. The room burned with light for a breath and when it cleared Dean found himself immobilized, hands frozen to the counter. She pulled a gun from a hidden holster under the shelf adjacent to the door and pointed it at them. “You’re a hunter, right? I hate hunters.”

“Of course you do. That would be why you have a welcome sign painted on your window, right?” Castiel said, sluggishly. Dean rolled his eyes towards Castiel, pleased that he could at least do that. Ever so slowly, Castiel’s fingers on his arm tightened.

“Hunters,” she spat. “Always kill first, don’t ask questions later. Your kind is the problem. I don’t sell to bad people. I don’t deal with bad people. You got someone killing something? Try looking in a mirror, pal. I can tell by your aura. The moment you walked in the store. You’re out for blood and I won’t have any part in it. Now I’m going to give you a chance to leave peacefully or you won’t be leaving here at all.”

Castiel’s movements seemed molasses slow at first inside whatever magical restraint the shopkeeper had cast on them. Castiel pushed off of Dean’s arm, arms flowing slowly but inexorably towards the counter until he gripped the edge. The shopkeeper stared at Castiel for a moment with an expression of utter shock on her face and then swiveled the gun towards Castiel.

Dean tried to shout. He willed his fingers to move, his arm to bend down to the weapons around his waist. Castiel would survive a gunshot, sure - even one fired from a gun aimed at him from just a few feet away. But every injury wrecked him. The days were long past when Castiel could pull a knife from his chest, draw on all the powers of Heaven, and heal in an instant. _Cas, look out get outta the way_ , he thought instead, desperately, like a prayer.

Castiel’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the counter and he threw himself headfirst towards the shopkeeper, dragging his body through the immobilizing field until he slid past the violet tile set into the floor in a circle around them. As soon as he was clear of the bespelled floor Castiel shot across the counter, coat flying, arms flailing. He slid at full speed towards the wavering gun and swiveled on the countertop mid-slide, kicking out one leg as he turned.

The shopkeeper shrieked as Castiel’s foot connected with the gun, her hand flying back towards the wall, away from Castiel and Dean. And then her fingers loosed the weapon and it clattered to the floor behind the counter. Castiel turned his slide into a leap and he practically flew to land in a crouch next to the fallen gun. He plucked it away from her scrabbling hands and pointed it in one smooth movement between her eyes. “Don’t move,” he growled.

She panted, eyes wide, and then brought the hand Castiel had kicked up to her chest to cradle it, her trigger finger bent like forked lightning. “That should have held you. That holds everything. Everyone. What are you?” she gasped.

Castiel, still pointing the gun at her, took three steps forward and slammed his hand onto the mosaic panel. His hand, then his eyes glowed like the sun for a moment. Dean’s ears popped painfully as the binding spell was destroyed. Castiel stood and swayed almost imperceptibly, one hand holding the gun and the other still hovering over the freshly blackened, smoking mosaic. Dean gasped for a moment, sensation rushing back to his limbs, before growling, “Who is he? He’s your worst nightmare.”

The shopkeeper flicked a glance at Dean, then slumped further as she realized that both hunters were now free and had the upper hand.

“We’re going to need to look at your ledger,” Castiel bit out.

~~~~~~~~~~

Later, as they walked out of the store Castiel chuckled. “Your worst nightmare? Really?”

Dean grinned and slung an arm around his shoulders. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“You watch too many movies.”

“How dare you! No such thing as too much, man.”

He fished out his phone and dialed Sam’s number. “Sam! Got a hit. Witch’s name is Ariel Nguyen. She’s apparently a regular here and bought a few ounces of fairy bones a few weeks ago and a bunch last summer too. My guess is she’s the one who’s been making all these friggin’ hex bags.” He listened for a moment to Sam, then said, “Text me her address when you get it and we’ll meet you there in a couple hours.”

They reached the Impala and Castiel slipped out of Dean’s embrace to head to the passenger’s side. Dean rounded the car, opening the door and relaxing for a moment in the leather seat, still warm from the almost entirely receded sunshine. He closed the door and fished for his keys. “Okay. Sam and Donna said they’d take point on the witch. Stake her out. Figure out where she’s at. And then we’ll all come at her when we get back to town.”

“Sounds good.” Castiel settled back in his seat.

Dean put the key into the ignition and then paused. He let out a long sigh then turned to Castiel. “You did good in there.”

Castiel’s mouth quirked up. “Of course I did.”

“You need to stop with the whole jumping in front of guns thing, though.”

Castiel turned towards him then, his smile fading. “I would have been fine. I would have healed eventually.”

“Not the point.” They were quiet for a moment, eyes locked on each other. Dean could feel his emotions, his desperate fear, rising to the surface to settle across his face like a neon sign. Castiel sighed and reached across the car to cradle Dean’s cheek in his hand. He shifted in the seat, sliding towards Dean until their foreheads touched.

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine,” Castiel said.

“Yeah.”

“We’ve been in worse situations.”

“Yeah.”

Castiel sighed. “Never gets easier, though.”

“Nope.” Dean tilted his chin until his lips pressed gently to Castiel’s. They kissed, long and sweet, until Dean pulled back. He cleared his throat and shook his head ruefully. “Got a witch to hunt.” From the way Castiel stared back at him, he knew his feelings were telegraphing loud and clear.

“Later,” Castiel whispered. Castiel ran a hand over Dean’s knee and settled against the seat back again, fingers curled possessively over Dean’s leg.

“Yeah.” Dean said somewhat breathlessly. “Later.” Reluctantly he pulled back and turned on the car. Once they were back on the open road he settled a hand over Castiel’s, giving it a light squeeze. They held hands as the Impala tore through the miles, a jaguar sprinting through the fiery sunset hills back to Stillwater.

~~~~~~~~~~

Donna left the crime scene before the Winchesters and Castiel, pulled away by a series of cryptic texts from her assistant. She arrived at the station only to have Bob rush up to her almost as soon as she walked in the door. “Donna,” he gasped. “There’s been another leak.”

Donna’s gut immediately dropped to her knees. _Oh no. Another news leak._ “Aikens case?” Bob nodded solemnly. “Alrighty,” Donna said with a sigh. “Let’s dig into it.” Bob trailed her to her office and as soon as the door was closed she asked, “Which station?”

“KPOW News 23. They were talking about, and I quote, the ‘mysterious beheading behind the apprehension of the kidnapper.’ They’re talking about--”

Donna pinched the bridge of her nose. “Let me guess. Vigilantes?” Bob nodded and she shook her head. “Welp, that’s at least a little better than last time.” Nearly a year ago autopsy details of one of Donna’s vampire kills had leaked to the press. Though she’d burned that body and heaps of evidence in a carefully crafted arson, the blade marks had still read clear enough on the skeleton for her excellently competent medical examiner’s report. The station who’d acquired those details had run with the story, painting a picture of a horrifying blade-wielding bogey-man. It had taken months for the public to forget about it and stop pressing Donna’s department to “do something” about psychos in the region. Donna was _doing something_. Unfortunately, it just so happened to be vigilante - and as off the books as she could manage it.

She circled around her desk and sat down to pull up the KPOW site. Sure enough, their featured breaking story centered around Derek’s timely rescue, noted that she’d found the body already beheaded, and proceeded to jump from there straight into a complicated and completely fantastical editorial-style article about a mysterious vigilante killer.

Bob settled at the edge of one of the chairs. “So what do we do?”

“Set up a press conference for tomorrow, please. We’ve gotta nip this Dexter nonsense in the bud. Emphasize our diligence and that we are, in fact, looking for whoever killed that man.” She tapped her lip thoughtfully. Between the eyewitness statements and fingerprint matches, her department had enough evidence by now to prove the vampire’s guilt in the Aikens abduction. What they couldn’t prove was how he’d been killed - or by whom. Donna could slice through a lot of red tape as Sheriff, but she knew she’d never survive if someone learned she’d actually sliced the head off a suspect, however despicable (or otherwise indestructible) they were. “We’ll emphasize the APB we put out but otherwise, it’s an ongoing investigation. We shouldn’t - we can’t share details about an ongoing investigation with the press.” It was the standard line. It should work. As much as she hated to admit it, it was almost time for the annual Corn Fest. The week long harvest celebration would quickly overshadow this news. She just had to last that long.

“Right. Press conference.” Bob looked at her, worried. “And we gotta find our mole.”

Donna nodded. “And find our mole.” She sagged a little in her chair. “Thanks, Bob. After you send out the notice, why dontcha head on home, okay?”

He frowned. “You sure? I don’t mind sticking around…”

“Bob,” she smiled at him. “Thanks a bunch for the offer. But I’m good. I’ll get a jump on paperwork and put together my notes for tomorrow.” He stood slowly. “I’ll be fine,” she said, trying to encourage him along. “Get some rest. We may get a lot of phone calls tomorrow.”

Bob laughed. That was an understatement and both of them knew it. “Okay, boss. Over ’n’ out.”

“Over and out, kiddo.” She slumped over the keyboard once Bob left her office, closing her door quietly behind him to afford her some privacy. “Well, ain’t this just a bucket of mud.” Donna rolled her fingers over her temples, stirring up the energy to write up notes for tomorrow’s impromptu press conference. Her phone chimed once. Twice. Donna pulled it out.

 **Sam:** Heading over to check out body now. U still there?

Donna slid open the message and replied,

 **Donna:** You betcha. Got some office work on my plate. Talk to Ludowski at the front desk. She’ll bring you down to the morgue.

 **Sam:** Thx. See you soon.

Donna pressed the phone to her forehead, then set it down and picked up her desk phone, informing the front desk about Sam’s imminent arrival. She sat for a moment dead still, as though deep in thought. Then she reached under her desk and pulled out a little waxed cardboard box. Donna stared at it sadly for a moment and then opened it, the sweet scent of fried batter filling her senses. “Heya, emergency stash. Needed ya after all.” She took out a donut and bit into it, sighing around the sugar. Donna ate the entire donut slowly, placed the box back under her desk, rolled her neck, and began to write.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam knocked on Donna's door a little over an hour later, holding up a short sheaf of paper. “Preliminary results are back,” he said as he closed the door again behind him.

“Good. What’s the low down?”

Sam handed over the paperwork. “Pretty much in line with the original report. I couldn’t find any hexed items on her clothes or personal effects. Time of death was likely earning morning. Some alcohol but no other drugs in her system. She shouldn’t have even been walking crooked. So while she still might have just run off and gone for a swim, it doesn’t look like alcohol was a direct factor. Oh, and get this. The hairs until her fingernails? Horse hair.”

“Horse hair?” Donna echoed. “That’s odd.” She wrinkled her nose. “Can’t think of any stables near there. Most of those are located further north or closer to the city. Guess that gives us another potential lead to check out.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. You were right about those hairs. There was something off about them. Like, if you looked directly at them they were just a bunch of white hairs. But in the corner of my eye they--”

“Sparkled?” At his startled look, she explained, “Elk made some offhand comment about the hair being glittery when she held it up to the light.”

Sam grimaced. “Yeah. We’ve seen, uh, sparkly and...glittery monsters before. Donna, I wonder if we’re looking at the wrong places? What if we’re not looking for a witch? What if it’s some kind of monster?”

“Hmm.” Donna settled back. “Can’t say I’ve ever dealt with either, but we gotta check it out, right?”

“Right. I’ll check the collection we scanned from the bunker library and see what I can find. But first… Donna,” Sam wrinkled his brow in concern. “What the hell is going on?”

Donna sat up, confused. “Sorry, with what?”

“I keep passing people in the halls, whispering, and they stop when I’m walking past.”

“Ain’t every day we get FBI around here. Or, fake FBI.”

Sam leveled a weak glare at her. “Right. Seriously. You can tell me. Is it something to do with the case?”

Donna shook her head. “No. Or at least not about the Somerset case. The vamp case on the other hand…” She screwed her face up in a grimace.

“What about it?”

“Well, it—“ Her cell phone rang. She checked it and held it up to Sam to show him the display, then answered it. “Deano! How’d the mission go?”

Donna nodded as Dean rattled off information on the witch’s whereabouts and she grabbed a notepad and scrawled the details, shoving the pad over to Sam to examine. “Perfect. Alright, you two head on back and we’ll figure out where she’s at.”

“Great,” Dean said. “See you soon, Donna.”

“See ya, Dean,” she said before hanging up and meeting Sam’s eye. “How’d you like a tour of the city, courtesy of yours truly? Your brother’s found us a witch.”


	3. Mages

Sam and Donna sat in her truck with the windows rolled down, the smell of fresh grass clippings and evening barbecue permeating the cab. Sam frowned and jiggled his knee as he stared at the witch’s house a few driveways away from where they parked. The witch lived on a quiet cul-de-sac nestled in the center of town in the most unwitchy house imaginable. “It’s like it’s too normal,” Sam said to Donna, trying to explain the odd feeling in his gut. “It looks like every other house on the block. The yard has dandelions growing up in it, for god’s sake.”

“Sorry,” Donna said sounding puzzled. “You’re weirded out by dandelions?”

“No,” Sam said slowly, trying to pinpoint what felt wrong about the house. “It’s just that the witches we run up against tend to either be barely functional members of society - like, broken down cabin level of barely functional. Or they’ve sold their souls for wealth or power and everything’s just…”

“A little too nice?”

“Exactly.” Sam sighed and shook his head. “It’s like this witch is just living the lower middle class dream, you know? If she’s our killer, what the hell is her motivation for—for everything?”

Donna checked her watch. “Your brother’ll be here soon and we’ll get to the bottom of it.” She frowned at the house and chewed at her lower lip. “But I gotta agree with you. Feels weird.”

“Too normal,” Sam said.

“Too normal,” she agreed and they settled back to wait some more. Nguyen’s porch light was on and a lamp blazed in the living room, clearly visible through open curtains.

A young woman strolled down the street with a white poodle dancing anxiously against its leash. She wore a broad sunhat, though the sun had nearly set by now.

The hat tilted up as the woman appeared to give Donna’s unmarked, personal truck a once-over and she sauntered slowly down the sidewalk until she reached the truck. She stopped and rapped her knuckles against Sam’s door, hat still dipping to cover her face. Sam frowned at Donna, who shrugged. “Can I help you?” he asked.

The woman lifted her chin and Sam’s breath caught as he recognized the woman from the driver’s license photo Donna had pulled from public records. He reached behind him and wrapped his fingers around the gun in his belt while Ariel Nguyen smiled broadly at them. “Maybe. I think you’ve been waiting for me.”

“Miss Nguyen?” Donna asked, recovering first.

“That’s me,” the woman said cheerily, tipping her hat back on her head with one finger and then looking down for a moment at the prancing dog at her feet. “Pickles! Sit!” She smiled at them again, though the cheery expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Sorry, I like to take Pickles for a long walk after work. I hope you haven’t been kept waiting long?”

“How did you—“

Ariel rolled her eyes. “You have come for me, right? Burn the witch?” She tilted her head and looked at Donna and laughed. “You set off one of my alarms. You know, ‘he who showeth dark intent…’” Ariel’s crooked smile dropped a little. “You’re hunters right?”

“Um,” Sam said, gaze darting around the quiet street and wondering how difficult it would be for Donna to officially downplay a firefight on a quiet residential street with a woman walking a poodle.

“Sheriff’s department,” Donna said cooly. “Just wanted to ask you some questions about an investigation.”

Ariel stepped back for a moment, eyes wide as though stunned. “Cops, huh?” She narrowed her eyes at Sam and shook her head minutely as though trying to unscramble a puzzle. “Well, come on in.” She stepped back from the truck and tugged at the leash in her hand before retreating towards her house, poodle prancing in her wake.

Sam looked over at Donna who shrugged and said. “That was…not what I expected. Why the heck does this suddenly feel like a trap?”

“Probably because it is,” Sam said as he opened his door. “Want to wait for Dean and Cas?”

Donna wrinkled her nose at him, though her eyes were a little too wide when she said, “Nah. No time like the present.”

Sam pulled his shirt back over the holster of his gun and then texted Dean: _Going in._ He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “If things go bad in there, I’ve got witch killing bullets in my gun.”

Donna arched her eyebrow. “And those are different from regular bullets how?”

“There’s magic in them that unbinds protective spells and temporarily mutes a natural-born witch’s ability to heal. The bullet does the rest.”

Donna frowned. “Noted. You know some weird stuff, Winchester,” Donna said as she got out of the car.

“No kidding.”

At the door Ariel greeted them with a smile and a plate of cookies. “Cookie?” she offered sweetly. “I’m a pastry chef at Pattibell’s and cookies are kind of my speciality.” When neither Sam nor Donna made a move to take a cookie, Ariel added. “They’re really good. Hazelnut raspberry. Made ‘em this morning.”

“No, thank you,” Sam said slowly. “We’re good.” The witch shrugged where she stood in the entryway, bare toes curled into a shaggy sun-patterned rug. Her dog lapped water noisily from a bowl in the kitchen, just visible past the short foyer hallway. Sam hesitated on the doorstep, discomfited less by her open and friendly demeanor and more by the instinctive feeling of _goodness_ he felt rolling off of her. He and Donna had arrived ready for a fight so this friendly vibe was extremely off-putting.

“Miss Nguyen,” Donna said carefully. “Do you know why we’re here?”

“Oh yes!” Ariel gestured with the plate of cookies. “Or, at least I’m pretty sure. I had a dream you were coming, anyway. Well. Not you in particular, but someone, you know?”

Donna shook her head. “You…dreamed about us.”

Ariel shook her head vigorously. “Oh yes. You’re not cops.” She looked at Donna. “Or, _you_ are at least - I guess. You're the one with that standing order at Pattibell's, right? But you are hunters, aren’t you? And you’re here about the hex bag I dropped? I tried to save her, I swear. I was just too late. Again. I didn't notice my own bag was gone from my pocket until I got home. Where'd you find it?” She continued to hold out the plate of cookies, seemingly rooted to the sunshine rug. Sam fixated on the plate for a moment. The cookies trembled minutely on the plate, her other hand held out away from her side, and realization washed over him. _She’s scared. She’s trying to show us she’s unarmed._

Sam had hunted long enough to let intuition guide him and relaxed a little as Donna - who was clearly on the same page - said in tones she might use for a troubled victim, “Yeah, we’re hunters. And we did find your hex bag. But right now we’d like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?”

Ariel swallowed and stepped back, allowing them inside. She seemed to cast around for a place to set the cookies and then gulped, slowly turned her back towards them, and walked into the living room. She set the plate of cookies on the coffee table and settled primly onto a floral patterned armchair.

Ariel’s living room appeared, like the witch herself, sunny and utterly harmless. The walls were painted a soft peach, lined with framed photos and little needlework samplers of herbs embroidered, roots and all, with finely crafted detail. Sam settled onto a gaudily colored lily-patterned couch and Donna sat next to him, the lines of her body tense though she tried to hide it behind an easy smile.

“Okay, so what can you tell us about those hex bags?” Sam fought against the urge that swept over him - again - to trust her. He wondered if there was a spell at work inside the house.

“I— They’re—“ Ariel’s gaze swept over Sam and Donna, lingering on Donna. “They’re protective charms. And I only trespassed to drop them off and then I was gone. I _swear_ , Sheriff.”

“Those are protective charms?” Sam asked. “Protecting against what?”

Ariel shot a confused look at Sam. “Sorry, you don’t know?”

Sam glanced at Donna who shrugged nearly imperceptibly.

“The backahasten. The water horse?” She looked between them and her mouth dropped open. “You mean you don’t _know_?”

“Sorry, you said water horse?” Sam said.

“Yeah. Water horse. As in the creature that’s been drowning people for the past year.” Ariel looked at Donna, aghast. “You seriously don’t know.”

“No,” Donna said. “But I’m guessing you do. Why dontcha fill us in?”

With that opening Ariel wasted no time inviting them into her kitchen. Walking through the doorway, Sam was hit with the overwhelming thyme and cinnamon scent of magic and baking. One counter was set up like a semi-professional bakery, with a deep stand mixer and neatly arranged stainless steel utensils hanging on a pegboard above the counter. Two loaves of fresh bread cooled on an island in the center of the kitchen. The other counter was full of unmistakable spell casting supplies. Herbs suspended from the floating cabinets dangled over a chalked circle on the countertop. There were several stone mortar and pestles with herbs in various stages of grinding. A swath of familiar pink and magenta fabric was folded on the far end of the countertop. Nearest to the door sat a battered wooden box, walnut dark, with runes carved into the side.

“Stillwater’s pretty nonmagical,” Ariel explained as she shuttled dried plant husks from a pile of books on the counter. She took the topmost book and opened it, the old leather spine cracking as she laid it flat on the counter and pushed it towards Sam and Donna. “So when the horse first arrived, I noticed it right away. You know, it’s a feeling you get.” She glanced at Sam as she said this, then tapped her finger against the pages. “Backahasten aren’t endemic to the area. In fact, I’ve never heard of one outside of Europe. But, you know, life is long and the world is strange. At first I went out to the water and just tried to, like, call for it? Just to meet it. Figure out how it got into our river. But it never came out and then…well, that guy drowned.”

“What guy?” Donna asked, barely any question in her tone. “Do you mean Rick Somerset?” Ariel nodded and Donna sighed. “Hokay. Talk to me about this…this backahasten. And how’d you get involved in making hex bags that showed up in the drowning victims’ homes?” She gestured towards the counter.

 _And if they’re protective hex bags,_ Sam thought, _why the hell are people dying?_

Ariel looked up at Sam sharply, as though she could hear his thoughts. “I get visions, sometimes. They’re never clear but sometimes I can pick up on just enough details to work out a location, or a person. See, after the backahasten arrived I started dreaming about the river and the people who were going to die.”

Sam winced in sympathy. “So you’re seeing the victims. But you can’t see the horse? Where it is or how to get to it?”

“No. It’s blocked or...or I’m just not strong enough. I don’t know. I’ve been scrying for victims, ever since I sensed the backahasten. My visions are shit, usually. But I made up some protective charms that I thought might work and tried to get them to the…to the victims before the horse got them.” She shook her head and her hands drew into tight fists. “But I can’t get the recipe right. I'm always too late and they keep dying and I can’t…” She sighed and rolled her head up to stare at Sam defiantly, as though willing him to understand. “It’s not an exact science! I swear I’m close to hitting on a repellant charm but I…the couple of people I managed to figure out before they died ended up dying anyway.” She tapped the rune-covered box. “I’ve been trying different fairy bones. And trying to modify it with some of our native water plants. Spells warding against backahasten are incredibly local. The stuff I’ve tried…they all use European plants and they just keep failing. I’ve been trying water plants from the St. Croix but…” She sighed again and shook her head at the counter.

“Meanwhile people are dying?” Sam suggested, his voice settling into a tone of calm sympathy. She sounded so much like another hunter.

Ariel started to fiddle with a mortar and pestle, her mouth drawn down into a bitter smile. “Exactly. People are dying.”

As Ariel spoke he’d skimmed over the book enough to glean that it really was focused on protective charms against backahasten. She seemed to relax the more they talked and he hoped she was starting to realize that while they were hunters, they weren’t the sort of kill-first-never-ask-questions hunters she might be used to evading.

“So let me get this straight,” Donna said, pulling the book towards her. “The folks who’ve been dying all this summer and last year - they’re being killed by some magical horse that lives in the river?”

“I don’t know if every death was from the horse,” Ariel replied. “But yeah. Most of them. Or a lot of them.”

“My grandmother used to tell me a story about a water horse,” Donna said slowly. At Sam’s look of surprise she explained, “Norwegian roots run strong around here, ya know? She told me a story about a horse that tried to trick a girl into climbing on its back so it could run into the river and drown her. You telling me that’s what we’re dealing with here? A homicidal monster?”

Ariel winced. “Ah, well. That’s the reputation they have nowadays. They can compel victims to mount them and then the rider can’t get off - or maybe doesn’t want to get off? Backahasten, as far as the lore goes, put their victims into sort of a fugue state. Like, they go to their death with a smile? Then the horse returns to the water and the rider drowns. That matches up with the deaths around here but…” She tapped the book again and then swiveled it to read,

_Backahasten are peaceful creatures, more water than animal, and are rarely seen on land. Like many supernatural creatures, the backahasten is feared. However, most in the craft agree that a backahasten is an omen of good fortune. These water creatures are said to be protective spirits for bodies of water, though as with any fey care must be taken not to enrage them. An offering of milk and honey may draw it to shore or mollify its wilder tendencies._

She looked up. “I mean, this doesn’t exactly sound like a creature bent on killing people. I think someone is controlling it. Someone here in Stillwater.” She stabbed the book adamantly and said, “Backahasten aren’t evil. I swear it. It just...doesn’t feel like it is.”

“Well, if this horse isn’t in charge, then who’s controlling it?” Donna asked.

“Sheriff, if I knew I wouldn’t be here making crappy protective charms. I’d be out trying to fight the crazed witch who was dumb enough to call a backahasten into existence in our river, and hateful enough to use it to kill.”

The kitchen was silent for a few minutes. Sam tapped his fingers on the counter and stared at Ariel, brow furrowed as Donna thumbed through the pages of the book.

Ariel took a deep breath in the silence and said, “If one’s here, it should act more like a protective spirit than anything. People should be getting saved miraculously, not drowned mysteriously. Anyway, I can’t see the horse anymore. I think whoever is controlling it is blocking me from it. I still get the dreams, though. The dreams about the victims? Even if they’re not telling me anything specific, that’s how I know the backahasten is still here in these waters. That’s how I know it isn’t free.” She looked at Sam again. “You know what I’m talking about right? You’ve seen it? Felt it?”

Sam thought about his own water dreams - half dream, half vision - and suppressed a shiver. He looked away from Ariel’s steady gaze. He shrugged, eyes flicking nervously between Ariel and Donna, though every inch at him screamed to say, _yes I’ve been having visions. Tell me what they mean. Tell me they’re okay._

Ariel squinted at his non-reply and then said in falsely bright tones, “Well. Anyway. My protective charms haven’t worked to keep the horse at bay, but I think I’ve figured out a way to break the geas on the horse.”

“You know how to break the spell?” Sam asked sharply. “Then why—?”

Ariel opened up her rune-box again and pulled out a little turquoise hex bag, this one in the more traditional shape of a witch’s charm. “This,” she said, “will free the mind from the backahasten’s control, though not the body. That is, you’d be able to climb right onto that horse and the whole time you’ll be aware of what you’re doing, but then you can’t get off. And the whole time you know that you’re about to die as you sink into the water.”

“That sounds horrible.”

“Yeah,” Ariel laughed bitterly. “That’s the figwort in the bag. Clears the mind of magical interference and frees the tongue but it won’t override everything. I used it in one of my bags early this spring. I— I went around to neighbors after that, trying to figure out what went wrong. Trying to get any clues about the horse. They all talked about screaming. They just heard screaming and screaming and then...nothing.”

“The Werther case,” Donna murmured. “His sister said he was raving on drugs at the time but the tox screen came back clean. We never could figure out why he’d gone into the water. He’d had a history of sleepwalking so…”

“So he got onto some magical horse in the middle of the night,” Ariel said. “And he knew what was going on every moment and screamed himself bloody until the water closed over his head.” She shook her head. “I haven’t dared to use figwort since then. Instead I’ve tried to focus on finding whoever’s controlling the horse. Stop it at its source. But this bag,” she shoved it towards Donna, “will free the mind - both yours and the water horse. And if you’re on the horse, connected to it, there’s a spell you can say that’ll break any spell that’s controlling it. You’ll free the horse.”

“This will break the controlling spell? Are you sure that’ll work?” Sam asked.

Ariel shrugged. “Pretty sure? There’s not really…a blueprint for the kind of spell. In theory it’ll work though.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

Ariel just shook her head. “Backahasten are…they’re not…” She paused for a moment and closed her eyes as though trying to organize her thoughts. “They’re immortal. Once one is born into a body of water, they don’t die. Not until the river, or the lake, or wherever they were born expires. Whoever is controlling the horse birthed it from these waters. I’m sure of it. And now that it’s here?” She shrugged. “It’s here to stay. You can’t kill a water horse.”

“So the river has to run dry to kill this thing?” Donna looked aghast.

“Pretty much. The best we can do is break the spell that’s controlling it. Set it free, back to the river. Hope it stays far away from people.”

“And if this spell doesn’t work, whoever is on its back trying to free it dies,” Sam said.

“That’s my problem. Yup. People just…they lose their will once they get on a water horse. And nobody’s ever done this before - not that I’ve ever been able to tell from the lore anyway.” She laughed nervously. “But, you know, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

“You?” Sam asked sharply. “You’d climb on the horse to say the spell?”

“To stop it from killing people? Yeah.” Her eyes dropped again to the counter, thumb rubbing against the turquoise hex bag. “It’s my job to protect where I live. You wouldn’t understand,” she said to Sam. “You’re a hunter. You get to leave.”

“That’s not how I—“

“It’s not your job,” Donna interrupted. “It’s not your job to protect this place, the people who live around here.” Her eyes glittered. “It’s my job.”

“Donna,” Sam said, instantly sure she was about to make an absolutely foolish offer.

“I’m the Sheriff. And I hunt monsters to protect the people who live around here. Who better than me to get this thing?”

“Donna, think about what you’re saying.” Sam looked at her set face with growing horror. “You’re talking about throwing yourself on a monster horse and killing yourself.”

“I’m a strong swimmer,” Donna said, mulishly.

“That's not-- Okay. No. That’s not gonna happen.” He turned towards Ariel. “And you’re not gonna kill yourself either. We’ll find another way. When Dean and Cas get here we’ll talk it over and we’ll— We’ll find a better way. We always do. Look, lore isn’t always right. Let’s talk to Cas. See if he knows anything about backahasten. Maybe there’s another spell. Something Enochian.”

“Enochian?” Ariel’s brows lifted. “What—?”

Sam held up one hand, unwilling to tell her too much about their hunting group, or that they were graced with an angel as a hunting partner. It was never smart to reveal too many cards, even though he’d found himself trusting Ariel. “How many of those hex bags do you have? And do you have the spell?”

Ariel ended up preparing four more hex bags. She handed over the turquoise charms and scrawled a spell onto a sheet of paper. At the bottom, she wrote a phone number. “Call me before you do anything,” she urged.

Sam nodded and handed her a fake FBI business card. “Likewise,” he said and he and Donna took their leave. He needed some time to do research of their own on the backahasten. If Ariel was lying about the horse, or concealing vital information, he wanted to figure that out before they made their move on the horse or its mysterious controller.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Well, that was enlightening,” Donna said as they headed for the car.

“Yeah, no kidding.” Sam patted his pocket. “That definitely did not go the way I—“

“Sam!” Ariel called out to him as they were halfway down her front walk. She ran out and caught his elbow. “Listen. I don’t know what your deal is. I was trying to figure you out the whole time.”

“Sorry?” Sam tried to step back but she pressed in again.

“You’re powerful. You’re so powerful, Sam. So much stronger than me. I can’t— When I scry, when I get visions, they’re so insubstantial. Half the time I can’t even figure out the victim until it’s too late. But you can track them down. Your visions might even be strong enough to find who’s controlling the horse. Figure out who that is and we’ve got ‘em.” She shook his elbow slightly. “So…pull your head out of your ass and just do it.” Panting slightly from panic or passion - Sam wasn’t sure which - she stepped back and nodded. “Just had to say my piece.”

Fear writhed inside Sam’s gut. “My powers? I don’t know what—“

“I can tell you’re scared. I don’t know why that is but I—“ Ariel shook her head as though clearing a thought. “Sometimes I can see the victims. For a while, at the beginning, I saw the horse. I can’t get a fix on whoever is controlling the horse. But I think… I think you’re powerful enough, Sam. You might be able to break through whatever’s been blocking me. If we can find who’s controlling the horse then nobody needs to die on it to break the spell. We stop the killer. The horse goes back to the water. Everyone lives. Just think about it, okay? And feel free to…to talk to me?”

Ariel backed away then, hands up held up defensively, and then she disappeared back into her house. Sam turned back towards Donna’s truck, his mind whited out with shock, dimly aware that Donna trailed after him. His cheeks burned. God, he wished she hadn’t said something right in front of Donna.

Ariel had talked about Sam like he had magic. Like he had powers. Disgust and longing to finally have someone with whom he could talk about his visions warred equally for his attention. Sam opened the passenger door and settled grimly into his seat.

The truck rocked gently as Donna slammed her door shut. She inhaled as though about to speak then slowly placed her key in the truck’s ignition. Donna drummed the steering wheel for a minute, then dropped her hands onto her knees. “Hokay. Gotta ask.” Sam turned towards her warily. “Visions? Powers?”

Sam made a face. “Yeah that’s… It’s a long story.”

Donna settled into her seat and half turned towards him. “Wanna talk about it?”

Sam screwed up his face. “No. Not really.” He cleared his throat, trying to get out his next thought - or maybe just ask Donna to start driving somewhere, anywhere but outside of Ariel’s house.

Donna started up the car and pulled away from the curb. Sam cleared his throat. “Okay, yeah. I need to— I want to talk about it. Just…just keep driving, okay? As long as… Can you maybe not tell Dean just yet? I want to talk to him about it. I do. Cas, too. But I need some time.” He took a breath, realizing that he’d explained precisely nothing so far. “I used to have these visions. Sometimes I’d be awake. Sometimes I was asleep. They told… I saw the future, Donna.”

“Well,” she said after a pregnant pause. “Ain’t that somethin’.”

“They went away. For a long, long time they went away. But lately I’ve been having ‘em again. Little things. Little details - things I’ve seen - half remembered when we’re on a case. They’re not even useful right now. Not like they were before. I’m not seeing any clues, any warnings. It’s just muddied impressions. Despite what she says about the… About the power.” He took a shaky breath. “Anyway, they’re bad news no matter what. I need to figure out what set them off again. And then I need to get rid of them.”

“Hey,” she said easily. “It’s your life. I don’t know what the deal was with that Ariel chick but you— Sam, I know you. I trust you to know what’s best about, well, whatever visions actually are.” She laughed a little. “I’m learning so much today. Water horses… Visions… The world is wilder and stranger and more beautiful…” she trailed off, then smiled at the road.

“You’re okay with that?” Sam asked though what he really wanted to ask was, _are you okay with me?_

“Of course, Sam. Why wouldn’t I be?” She glanced over. When she saw his face she pulled over into a Burger Barn parking lot, parked the truck, and turned to him fully. “Sam. You’re a good person. Of course I’m okay. I’m okay with you. You wanna tell me what this is about?”

For a moment Sam contemplated telling Donna everything. His dark, demon-blood filled past. The cleanses - magical or non-magical - that he’d done over the years - all in an attempt to feel normal and good about himself. Self flagellation had become a way of life, in so many ways. Instead, he shook his head. He couldn’t bear the thought of the light in her eyes fading and seeing a polite, false smile turned on him. He shrugged. “It just brings up memories from my past. Ones I’d rather not relive - or frankly even deal with right now.”

Donna nodded. “Oh I get that to a certain extent. Dealing with some demons of my own right now.”

“Demons? You?” Sam asked, as curious as he was desperate to deflect the topic from himself.

“Oh yah. I told you when I called that it was a touchy time to hunt right now?” She brushed stray curls off her forehead. “Truth is, I’ve been under scrutiny since I took this job. Since the beginning. Heck, through my whole career. I’ve had to scrape for every scrap of respect. But someone’s trying to undermine me. Someone…inside my own department. I’m almost sure of it. There’ve been leaks to the media about cases I’ve worked on. Monster cases.” She sighed. “They’re leaking the weird stuff. The things I can’t explain without telling folks the right way to kill a vampire, or why vics get found without hearts. After the last time we really worked on security. Got data and departments locked down and it hasn’t happened since.” She slumped a little in her seat and smiled sadly at Sam. “But here we go again. Someone leaked details about how that vamp was found.” Sam looked at her, puzzled, and she clarified. “Headless.”

Sam’s brows shot up and he nodded. “Ah. Yeah that would...be a problem.”

“Just a smidge. I can’t figure out who’s leaking the info. These articles are talking - already - about elections. I think I’m gonna be targeted next election and I have so many secrets, now. Secrets big enough to drown in, Sam. And people can’t know about them. They can’t know about the monsters. The things in the shadows.” She raised her hands and tried to smile. “Sometimes I think—“ She stopped, gulped, and shook her head.

“Sometimes you think what?” Sam prompted gently.

“I think about…walking away. Not from huntin’. I’m good at it, ya know? And I save lives. I keep a little bit of horror out of someone’s life. That’s a real good feeling, ya know?”

Sam nodded. Oh, yes, he knew.

“If I walked away from my job as Sheriff, or even law enforcement entirely, I’d have more freedom. Freedom to move around without scrutiny. It’s tempting, sometimes. On the harder days.”

“You also lose some freedom,” Sam told her quietly. “Your job gives you the power to change people’s lives. I’ve seen you let innocent people go free, Donna. People who were possessed, who didn’t have a choice. That’s— That’s an awesome power, Donna. You gotta know that. You’ve got to hold on to that.”

Donna nodded. “I know. It’s why you don’t see me quittin’. I either deal with it - or I let it all crumble. Those are my only two options. First one seems like a better option.”

“You either deal with it, or you crumble,” Sam repeated. He nodded slowly. “I get it. I guess I’m feeling that too, right now.”

Donna’s smile this time was a little more genuine. “Well, aren’t we just a coupla peas in a pod now?”

They drove back to Donna’s house in silence, both occupied with their own thoughts. Sam’s mind churned endlessly with his visions, Ariel’s confidence in his powers, and the specter of the murderous horse looming over the slow waters of the river.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam texted Dean when they got back to Donna’s, expecting a call, or a flurry of angry texts about going in with just the two of them. But when Dean arrived at Donna’s he simply chucked off his shoes at the door and flopped down on the couch next to Donna. He pulled Castiel down to sit beside him, threw an arm over his shoulder, and asked about the case like he was asking about the weather.

They spent the evening around Donna’s kitchen table, buckets of chicken and the boxes from Pattibell's taking pride of place in the center, their laptops open to discover as much as they could about backahasten.

Just past one in the morning a frog chorus was the only sound in the kitchen, a steady whir through the open windows and screen door, until Sam cleared his throat wearily. “Okay.” Sam leaned back in his chair and tapped at a sheet of notes. “So between Ariel’s book and what we’ve managed to find online we’re looking at two possible ways to control this thing. The first is from within a fairy circle - usually from an old druidic circle.”

“Bet Stillwater’s just teeming with ancient druidic circles,” Dean said drily from behind his laptop.

“Yeah, seems a bit far fetched,” Donna agreed, shoving at the reading glasses slipping on her nose. “What’s the other one, Sam?”

Sam turned his computer around to face the rest of the table. On his screen was a news website with a picture of a copper-worked necklace. At the center of the design was a Celtic rendering of a horse, mane and tail exploding into intricate knotwork at the edges, like waves. “This amulet--”

“Of course, there’s an amulet,” Dean muttered.

“--gives its bearer the power to create a water horse, and with it, the power to control its actions.” Sam shrugged. “Or at least that’s the legend associated with this thing. A museum reported it missing a few years ago.”

“So someone stole it,” Donna said. “And brought it out here to kill people. That seems...overly elaborate.”

“The alternative is that the water horse just sprang into being here in the St. Croix and decided to go homicidal.” Sam said. “Cas, have you been able to sense anything?”

Castiel shook his head. “No. I felt something when we first arrived. Some kind of power in the river. It didn’t seem malevolent but then again, fairy magic is so alien from anything soul-derived.” He looked up and caught Donna’s blank expression. “Enochian magic - angel magic - as well as demon magic are powered by human souls. Feeling that, or even average spellwork would be easy. Like...like reading a clearly labeled sign. Fairy magic comes from another dimension. And fae creatures, like a backahasten, are very difficult to read. They tend to exist a little outside the good or bad, Heaven or Hell dichotomy that angels were created to understand.”

“So you can’t figure out if it’s good or bad because you’re an angel?” Sam asked.

Castiel smiled ruefully. “Something like that.”

Dean patted Castiel’s forearm absentmindedly, still hunched over his computer. “Well, hell. Neither can we. For now, let’s assume somebody’s stolen themselves a magical necklace. that’s somebody as in, presumably, someone human. What we can do right now is figure out the human motivation. If what Ariel said is right…”

“And if the horse is being controlled by a human, we should be able to track them down. Any luck piecing together how those relate?” Castiel asked, leaning over to look at the spread of case files on the table.

“Not yet,” Donna said. “But we’re working on it.” She also leaned over the table and began to sort through the case files for the drowning victims again.

“So Rick Somerset was the first person to die on the river in over a year. He drowned while fishing. He’d been found several days after his empty boat was discovered and the autopsy had been consistent with accidental drowning. The following month an elderly woman, Jillian Lake, drowned one hundred feet from her retirement complex. Then in July and August, two young people - college aged - drowned. Sal Werther had gone over a dam in his canoe, or so the theory went. His body tumbled in the water for a while and the canoe was found nearby. Tiffany Black was home from college and went missing on a run. It had been a rainy morning and she’d displayed some head trauma as though she’d slipped and fallen into the river. Andrew Wallace, in his mid fifties, went swimming after a neighborhood barbecue in October, his blood alcohol level high enough to start a fire. Then Randy Acker in May, twenty-two and working at a local garage. And Angela Somerset the month after, in June.” Donna propped her elbow on the table and rested her cheek on her fist as she flipped through the files.

“I mean, what’re we looking at here? Revenge? Random victims?” Dean took a swig of beer. He held up a finger. “You know, the good thing here? If that necklace thing is involved, maybe destroying it’ll destroy the horse.”

Sam frowned. “The lore says there’s no way to do that. Not until the water runs dry.”

Dean shrugged. “Come on, man. You’ve seen what we can do with a shotgun and a can-do attitude. Wouldn’t be the first horrible monster we’ve defeated by destroying some stupid object.”

Castiel looked contemplative. “If the amulet is involved, and if it has the power of creation within it, perhaps it has the power of destruction within it as well.” He nodded slowly. “It’s worth considering. Regardless, we’ll need to be on guard when we encounter the horse. Much of what I’ve read says that the backahasten reels in its riders with its gaze.”

“So it hypnotizes folks?” Donna asked.

“Something like that, yes. Meeting its gaze enables the horse to compel the victim to mount it and once on the horse, there’s no dismounting unless the backahasten allows it.”

“And if some homicidal human is in control of it,” Sam said, nodding, “then…”

“You’re toast.” Donna grimaced. “Gotcha.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam couldn’t sleep. Cricket song leached through the cracked windows and moonlight flickered around the room fitfully whenever a light breeze stirred the curtains. He lay on the couch and stared at the lifted wings of Donna’s mounted duck collection and tried to turn off his brain.

_You’re powerful. You can track them down. Your visions might even be strong enough to find who’s controlling the horse._

He wanted to fold, lay down his cards and back out of the game. He never asked for visions, never asked to live half his life feeling dirty and wrong. After so much blood and darkness what he really craved was peace. After the visions started to return he’d spent so much of his time quietly freaking out, researching what they could mean and - most importantly - how to get rid of them. Sam pressed the crook of his arm over his eyes.

_Either deal with it, or crumble._

Sam dug his heels into the couch cushion, anxiety chewing his gut into pulp as the night wore down.

And then he sat up. He took one heaving breath, then another until he felt a little less like throwing up. Sam breathed carefully until his mind felt centered and his fingers no longer trembled on his knees. He was a different person now, no longer half sick on demon blood and insecurity. _I can do this._ _I can do this._

In Donna’s moonlit living room Sam closed his eyes and deliberately chased a vision for the first time in years.


	4. Battles

Donna woke early, well before her alarm, and lay in bed for a few minutes with her arm flung over her eyes. _Press conference today,_ she thought. _Try to remember that you want to keep your job._ She pushed herself out of bed, adrenaline needling under her skin, and decided she might as well start a pot of coffee. The Winchesters were early risers; they were possibly higher functioning insomniacs than anybody else she knew. Donna wasn’t surprised to find Sam already sitting in the kitchen, laptop open before him, coffee maker rattling on the counter. He glanced up as soon as she walked in, eyebrows arched. He looked like excitement and horror were staging a battle across his face and she pulled out a chair immediately and sat down. “Talk to me, Sam.”

Sam huffed out a breath. “Okay. I tried it.” He spoke quietly as though he were afraid of being overheard. Given his request that she not tell Dean or Castiel about his visions, she suspected that this was the case. “I tried to see who’s responsible for all these deaths.” He gestured to the stack of case files on the table.

“Yeah? Any luck?”

“Nothing. At least, I don’t think I saw whoever might be controlling the horse. But I might have figured out the next victim.” He flipped around his laptop to display a Facebook page of a smiling young woman.

“Allie Shaw,” Donna read. “What’d you see?”

“At first it was...pretty muddy.” Sam laughed bitterly. “Can’t say I’ve given this a whole lot of practice. Back when it was happening...all the time...I pretty much just wanted it gone.

“I couldn’t see who - or if anyone even was controlling the backahasten. But I did see the horse in the water. And I saw a woman standing in a park while the horse walked out of the river. When I tried to focus on her I saw a bunch of, um--” Sam paused and rubbed at his chin as though in thought. “I guess it was kind of like a montage of her, like my vision was just a single moment on a larger recording and all I had to do was hit the rewind button to trace back to the beginning. I saw her house, Donna. I got an address.”

“Sam,” Donna said, after a moment of stunned silence. She grinned. “That’s incredible. You didn’t see when, didja? And tell me about that park.” Donna pulled a notepad across the table and began to take notes as the coffee scalded behind them.

“But Donna,” Sam sighed, shoving a hand through his hair several minutes later. “This still doesn’t make any sense. I mean, not really. So, we have a victim’s name. That’s great but...how is she connected? How are any of these connected? I mean, we’ve got seven drowning deaths on the river since last May. If it’s the backahasten, is this some kind of feeding schedule? Or if someone’s controlling it, then how do these cases relate to each other?”

Donna hummed thoughtfully. “I can’t shake the feeling that the Somersets are key. Both Angela and Rick drown, both lifelong strong swimmers and river users? It’s too…”

“Convenient,” said Sam. “I agree. You don’t think their son had anything to do with it, do you?”

“Hmm. He’s been away at college during most of these incidents. Unlikely, though I wouldn’t rule it out. I’ve got a meeting set up with him after this morning’s press conference. Speaking of which,” she looked at the time on her phone. “I’d better git on out and pick up breakfast for the team. How would ya guys feel about trailing Allie and making sure she’s safe until I get a chance to talk to her?”

“Will do. Good luck today.” Sam pushed back from the table and headed for the coffee pot on the counter.

From the kitchen doorway, Donna heard low voices talking in the guest room. She gazed for a moment in that general direction, then said fondly. “Gotta say, Dean seems real happy these days.”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah. Weird, right?”

“It sorta is.” She shared a smile with Sam. “Tell those guys good mornin’ for me, will ya?” She paused at the kitchen door. “And Sam? You did good. Really, really good.”

Sam’s answering smile, though brief, was bright enough to break a wattage meter. He looked down at the cup of coffee he was preparing. “Thanks, Donna.”

“Of course,” she replied gently. Then, armed with new potential leads, she left for the station, and the early press conference.

~~~~~~~~~~

The station was quiet when Donna arrived, still mostly staffed by night shift workers preparing to go home. In just over an hour she’d be speaking to the press about a fake manhunt, followed by a scheduled meeting with William Somerset, the grieving son of Angela Somerset. It would be a full morning, but she still shoved a stack of paperwork waiting for her review aside on her desk and settled in to learn a little more about Allie Shaw and more importantly, try to figure out how all the victims were connected. She pulled up all the drowning case files from the past year and scaled them across her monitors. She looked at the photos of the deceased, nibbling at the donut she’d selected for herself, and frosting melted onto her fingertips.

The Somerset deaths shared an obvious link. Every drowning victim was a native to the Stillwater area. Four of the victims were around the same age as Allie Shaw - around 22 or 23. She tapped at Randy Acker’s photo and then switched over to Allie Shaw’s Facebook page. Allie had a public friends list and Donna scrolled through it, hoping to find some connection - however tenuous - between the victims on social media. At the end of the list, she froze. “Cassidy Elk?” Donna said, looking at a cheerful photo of her sergeant under Allie’s friends list. She tapped her finger to her lower lip. “Hmm. I wonder what you can tell me about Allie?”

She called up the station’s instant messenger and saw Elk signed in. Donna messaged her to stop by her office before the press event, then continued to jot down notes until she heard a knock at her door.

“You wanted to see me, Sheriff?” Elk ducked inside.

“Yep, come on in. Have a seat.” She waited until the sergeant was settled in a chair and then asked, “I'm gonna cut straight to it because I've got a little bit of a time crunch this morning. I'm after some details about Allie Shaw. I think you know her?”

“What?” Elk turned bright red. “How did you--?”

“Ms. Shaw’s name has come up in connection to the Somerset case.”

Elk blustered for a moment, seemingly speechless. “Where’d you hear-- I’ve been working that case with Rawlins. He would’ve told me.”

“I know. There may be a wider pattern at work here. I want you to keep working the angles, see if anything else comes back from the morgue. But in the meantime, I’m personally looking into Stillwater’s latest drownings.” She leaned forward and tried to smile to assuage Elk’s peculiar, sudden panic over Allie Shaw’s name.

“I don’t-- I don’t know. Um.”

“If you think of anything, will ya let me know?” Elk nodded and Donna thanked her for stopping in. That was a clear dismissal in Donna's department and Elk stood up slowly, rubbing her hands against her thighs as she did so.

Sergeant Elk paused at the door. “I hear you’re talking with William Somerset today,” she said.

“Oh yah. Right after this morning’s press conference.”

Elk took a deep breath as though she had something more to say and then she shook her head. “Okay. Just, uh, just curious. Thanks, Sheriff.” She nodded sharply, then left the office, closing the door carefully behind her.

Donna sat for a moment staring at the door. Elk seemed off to her - had been ever since she’d been put on Angela Somerset’s case. Donna’s intuition itched under her skin, but she bundled it tightly and set it aside to examine later. She had a press conference to run. She gathered together a small sheaf of paper, slipping it into a faux-leather binder. Donna checked her uniform for donut sugar, adjusted her weapons belt, and headed off to speak to the gaggle of reporters waiting in the first floor meeting room.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, Donna drove to the Somerset house with her mind circling around the press conference. It had gone well, as far as those events tended to go. She’d given reporters an update on the Aikens case, confirming information her department had already deemed public and deferring all other queries due to the pending investigation. She’d tried to be reassuring - convince people that they weren’t in danger. Only time - and the next news cycle - would see if that message stuck. She clenched the steering wheel, knuckles stark white with strain. Donna willed her fingers to relax and tried to focus her mind on the next task: her talk with William Somerset.

She pulled up outside the Somerset home and parked on the edge of the paved loop at the front of the house. Donna drove her official cruiser today and briefly missed her truck and its beautifully thorough arsenal on what was essentially a supernatural hunting investigation. She had her officer-issue weapons at her side but protocol generally made it difficult to just swashbuckle around with machetes or silver daggers shoved up her sleeves and down her ankles.

She knocked on the door and William answered it. His hair and shirt were damp as though he'd been caught in a very small, very particular rain shower. William ran a self-conscious hand through his hair, then invited Donna inside the Somerset family home. He ushered her to a sitting room jutting out from the large marble foyer. “Sorry I missed you earlier,” he said. “I went out for a run.”

“Sorry? You missed me earlier...today?”

William looked surprised. “Yeah, my gardener said a cop stopped by about an hour ago. She told her I was out. I just figured it was you.”

Donna schooled her expression, though her gut roiled. She’d need to text Sam right after this, find out if they’d stopped by to try to interview William. Otherwise, there might be a problem. Either another officer was acting without her knowledge on the Somerset case, or the killer in control of the water horse had tried to approach William under the guise of police.

William didn’t seem to notice her turmoil because when he sat down he immediately asked, “Did you find out anything about my mom’s death?”

Donna filled him in on what they knew, officially, then attempted to shift the conversation towards the far more pressing matter of apparent serial drowning victims. “William, I’d like to ask you a few questions about some other cases we’ve been looking into. We’re just tryin’ to find possible connections at this point between a few other accidents and your mother’s death.”

“Connections?” he said bitterly. “You mean, like, my dad drowned over a year ago? And now my mom’s gone too? Those kind of connections?”

“Right now we got no reason to think your parents’ deaths were anything but accidental. These are just routine--.”

He looked at her Sheriff badge warily. “Yeah, they usually send the county Sheriff around for routine questions.” His mouth tightened. “If you don’t think it was an accident, can you at least tell me what you think happened?”

 _Absolutely not._ Donna watched him with a carefully neutral expression. “You’re aware she’d been drinking?” William nodded shortly. “Right now the theory is...that she went for a late night swim and drowned.”

He laughed bitterly. “Right.”

“But we’re looking into all angles, right now. William,” Donna said, pulling out a folder with photos of the other victims. “I’d like you to take a look at something for me. We’re investigating some other recent deaths along the St. Croix. Can you tell me if any of these people look familiar to you?”

He looked through the photos, his face set in tense lines. Then he began to grow pale. “I hadn’t heard that...that all these people died,” he whispered and touched one of the photos in the sheaf she had handed to him.

Donna tapped the photo on top, a photo of Randy Acker. Her heart rate sped up. “You know him then?”

“Yeah. He is - was - an old friend. I hadn’t seen him in years. We sorta lost touch for a while.” He shook his head. “So he’s really… Man.” He swallowed hard, then said quietly, “I know almost all these people.” He shuffled through the photos and pointed at Andrew Wallace, the middle-aged post party swimmer. “I don’t know this guy but everyone else… This is gonna sound strange, Sheriff.”

She settled forward and put as much gentle conviction into her voice as she could when she said, “Try me.”

For a moment William looked haunted and then began. “When I was ten my parents threw me a big party. We used to keep a farm with horses and we held the party at the farm so everyone would have a chance to ride and have, you know, lots of space for people to spread out. Me and some other kids went into the barn - mostly friends from school. We went to the back of the barn where one of our horses was stabled. This horse was…” he shook his head. “A real piece of work. Violent. Ill tempered. We were gonna sell him but...” His voice dropped to a whisper. “One of the kids climbed over the gate. Got inside. And the horse just…freaked out. It killed him, Sheriff. Kicked him in the head and he might’ve been dead then. I don’t know. And then it stepped on him and...and he didn’t move and I knew. I just knew. By the time we got the horse under control. Got him out. It was too late. He was dead. Jake was dead.”

He seemed to shrivel in on himself. “It’s the sort of thing that ends friendships, right? We sold the horses. Sold the farm eventually. I moved schools and then moved away as soon as possible.” He rubbed his face in his hands and looked down at the photos again. “And you’re telling me...what? Those people, my old friends, they’re dead? My parents are dead? What the fuck’s been happening here?” He ended the question on a wail.

“I’m tryin’ to figure that out, Mr. Somerset. Can you tell me who all were at the party?” She indicated the stack of photos. “Were all these people there?”

Hands shaking, William sorted the photos. He made a pile with Randy’s, Tiffany’s, and Sal’s photos. “These were all there in the barn.” He pulled out the photo of the elderly woman. “She was the stablemaster watching over things that day. She’s-- She’s the one who got control of the horse afterwards. She pulled out Jake’s-- She pulled out the body.”

“Was this everyone in the barn?”

He screwed his eyes shut. “No. No, there were a few more. Um, Allie… Allie…”

“Shaw?”

“Yeah! And, um...Cassidy Elk.”

“Cassidy Elk?” Donna said, surprised. _Sergeant Elk?_

“There were maybe one or two other kids there, too.” William snapped his fingers, searching for a name. “'There was at least another boy there. Mike...something or other?” He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t remember.” He ground his palms into his eyes. “That was a seriously fucking bad day.” He sighed and slumped, looking bleakly at the photos. “So what are you telling me, here? Everyone who went to my tenth birthday party is dying? Because that’s just fucking…”

“I’m not saying anything, William,” Donna said gently. “We’re just trying to piece things together. In the meantime, do you have some place you can stay? Other than...here? By the river?”

William stared at her. “I mean,” he said slowly. “This was my parent’s house. It’s my house now. I guess I was gonna...stay here?”

“I think,” Donna said, picking her words carefully, “given the current investigation, it might be best if you put some distance between yourself and the river.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” He flinched and then said in milder tones. “Sorry, uh, Sheriff. What-- Why?”

“As you said, there have been a lot of drownings. They may be connected in some way, and they all happened near the river.” Donna’s phone buzzed once, then twice. There was a pause and then her phone began to ring. She held up a hand apologetically and pulled it out to glance at it. Sam was trying to call her. “Just please promise me you’ll find a place to stay. Find somewhere away from the river, maybe outside of town, even. Just for a few days. We should know more soon and I promise I’ll fill you in as soon as I know anything.”

Donna left the Somerset house feeling discomfited. They finally had a firm connection between their drowning victims - a decades old child’s birthday party. According to William, there were at least three surviving attendees: Allie Shaw, Sergeant Elk, an unidentified “Mike”, and William Somerset. She lingered on Sergeant Elk, who had seemed a little strange during their morning meeting. In fact, she’d been tense for the entirety of Angela Somerset’s case. Almost like she knew something more than she’d bothered to share. Donna nodded her head sharply and got into the car. Okay. First she’d check in with Sam, and then she would track down Sergeant Elk to press her for some answers.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam sat in the back seat of the Impala, carefully scanning the parking lot of a local county park, hoping to spot Allie Shaw. He balanced the phone on the seat back and scowled when it went to voicemail. “Donna,” he said. “It’s ten o’clock. Just wanted to give you a quick update. We tracked Allie to Longfield County Park if you want to meet us there. See you in a bit.” Sam hung up the phone. “She must still be talking to William.”

“Great, hope she gets something useful because right now we’ve got nothing but a bunch of jack and squat.” Dean groused as he parked the car. “And what’s up with this Allie chick? She’s going on a friggin’ hike? Couldn’t somebody just tell her, I dunno...”

“There a homicidal water horse after you,” Cas suggest drily.

“Okay, yeah. I can see how that would be uh…not the best.” Dean chuckled and Sam rolled his eyes.

“Come on man,” Sam says. “Let’s get moving. She’s gotta be somewhere in this park. I mean, her car’s right here in the parking lot. And I don’t… I don’t like the looks of it here.” He tried to quash the agonizing feeling of _deja vu_ at the surroundings. He’d seen Allie and the horse in a park on the river. Although most of the deaths had been spaced about a month apart, this little county park could certainly fit his vision. If the killer had gotten wind of hunters they might be stepping up their game and increasing the frequency of the killings. It had happened to them before.

“So that witchy vision Ariel had,” Dean said at the trailhead which forked off in two different directions. “Did she see which way to go?”

Sam scratched his neck awkwardly. When Dean and Castiel arrived in the kitchen that morning Sam had filled them in on most of the details but had left out the part about him being the one to have the visions of Allie. When Dean had pressed him on the source of their new clue, Sam had said, in a fit of panic, that Ariel had called up Donna early that morning and dropped the clue. Dean appeared to buy it, but he’d grumbled about ‘friggin’ witches and their friggin’ visions’ ever since they’d arrived at Allie Shaw’s house and found that she wasn’t at home. Donna had texted some suggestions on local parks in the area that might match what Sam saw in his vision and, on Sam’s hunch, Dean, Castiel, and Sam had spent the morning driving between parking lots until they found a car that matched her vehicle registration.

They hiked out along the main trail leading from the parking lot. It was a golden, glorious morning with warm sunlight filtering through the trees. To Sam the breeze seemed alive with electric fear, the tension of a terrible event waiting just out of sight, displacing the air. The coffee he’d had this morning sat sour in his gut. In contrast, Dean was so relaxed he began to whistle, hands jammed loosely into his pockets. Even Castiel looked at ease, a gentle smile gracing his face for nearly the entire morning. Sam hunched his shoulders, and bore the weight of worry alone.

Sam had hoped they would find Allie along the trail in the thick woods and away from the water. Instead, they emerged from the woods to a long clearing along the river. A packed dirt trail ran along the water’s edge, dotted with benches and slender trees. A woman walked along the path on the far end of the open space. “That’s got to be Allie,” he said. She disappeared into the trees as the trail wound through dense brush and Sam, Dean, and Castiel began to jog after her.

Maple and honeysuckle choked the woods and it was only when they emerged from the overgrown path that Sam could see the next riverside clearing. His eyes lit on a park bench situated beside a little plank dock and he stumbled as the memory of his vision wrapped him in a vice-like embrace. _This was the place._ This park was what he had seen in his vision. The stench of the river seemed suddenly overwhelming and, nauseated, Sam didn’t notice the fog until it was too late. Castiel spotted it first, pointing out the first tendrils as they twisted over the embankment and spilled onto the running path. Sam choked on words uselessly for a moment before he began to shout. “Allie! Get away from the water!”

She turned, saw three shouting men running towards her, and stumbled backward. Behind her, something incandescently bright emerged from the water. “Wait!” Sam yelled. “Stop!” She wheeled around again, clearly about to run in the opposite direction, and then froze at the sight of the horse emerging onto the bank. It loomed over her like a morning moon, white against the blue sky, mist sifting over its hooves and spilling over the grass.

“Don’t look at it!” Sam yelled. He might as well have shouted at her to look long and lovingly into its eyes because that’s exactly what she did. Allie froze on the spot and the horse began to bow towards the ground. Sam hurtled forward as fast as he could, catching Allie in a flying tackle as she began to take halting, dreamlike steps towards the backahasten.

Allie struggled viciously in his arms. Sam pinned her to the ground, desperately, and out of the corner of his eye saw the horse stand tall again and begin to approach them.

“Sam, keep her down,” Dean yelled and Sam wrenched himself around, arms wrapped around the bespelled woman. He watched Dean and Castiel as they warily approached the horse. Dean settled into a stance with his gun up and eyes half shut, clearly struggling to avoid looking into the horse’s eyes. He squeezed off one shot, then another. The bullets passed harmlessly through the heart of the horse with a strange watery ripple and kicked up turf as they exited the creature. Dean looked at the gun in his hand with dawning horror. “Aw, shit.”

Castiel circled the horse on its other flank, his angel blade ready in his hand. “I may not be able to kill you,” Castiel growled. “But I can hurt you badly. Stop this.” The horse looked at him and its ears swiveled back as though it understood him. Mist curled from the backahasten’s nose as it snorted once, angrily.

Castiel’s attack was a blur, dancing in and slashing with his blade, then skating away as quickly as he approached. Unlike Dean’s bullets, the angel blade left long, muddy green slices along the horse’s foreleg. The horse screamed as algae green ooze began to seep from the wounds. Allie kicked more strenuously in response, catching Sam’s shins and knees with her heels. Castiel whirled in for a second blow and Sam barely had time to process the horse’s hoof planted squarely into Castiel’s chest before he went flying limply, like a discarded toy, into the water. He landed sideways in the shallows with a massive, muddy splash and didn’t move.

“Cas!” Dean’s yell echoed in the small park and Sam shot a desperate look at him, trying to figure out their options. Castiel’s blade had been knocked from his hand onto the bank. It shone silver against the mud, out of reach by either of them. Dean fired again, the bullet ripping through the horse once again, with no effect. Dean turned to the river, to the body floating on the water, and his face held such a naked look of anguish in it that Sam flinched back a little. And then Dean turned towards Sam, and the horse, and froze. The fear and pain dropped away like he’d taken off a mask.

“Shit,” Sam breathed as his brother took one halting step towards the horse. Dean’s gun thunked to the wet ground. Sam hauled himself off of Allie, tangentially aware of the horse bowing to Dean and Dean stumbling towards its back. Allie tried to jump up again and Sam, out of options, pushed her as far from the horse as possible. She tumbled across the ground, dazed. Sam scrambled towards Dean, his arms outstretched as he prepared to leap onto the horse and use all his body weight to drag Dean bodily from it. Dean slid his hand up the horse’s flank, wound his fingers into its mane, and pulled himself onto the backahasten’s back.

The horse fluidly gathered itself into a crouch and leapt into the water with a cascading splash that sent lily pads and water weeds tumbling. “No!” Sam plunged in after the horse. Above the thunder of the blood in his ears and the crashing of bodies in water he heard Castiel call for his brother.

The river pulsed around the backahasten, silvery waves rippling out as the horse sank into the water, Dean slumped forward on its back, hands tangling in its mane, and swayed as the water rose to his chest, tugging his pliant body with the current. Sam floundered against the drag of the water as the river swallowed his brother. At the last minute, as Dean’s shoulders began to sink beneath the waves, Castiel reached the horse. He lunged at Dean, wrapping his arms around Dean’s torso and pulled, lips flaring as he gritted his teeth in the effort he expended into trying to pry Dean from the horse.

And then the water rose to Dean’s chin, and ears. And then Dean’s head disappeared under the water, and Castiel’s too.

Sam reached the spot where they disappeared just seconds later and he dove into the water, panicked but sure his fingers would meet fabric or skin or long strands of horse tail in the murky water. His fingers tangled in the flexible stems of water plants and skimmed through the thick, sticky mud at the bottom. The river felt heavy above his head, pressing in like his dreams from the bunker. Soon the water would fill his mouth. Soon it would be all over.

Sam broke the surface, gasping, then dove again. And again. He didn’t know how long he kept diving, holding the bubble of fear and sorrow in, suppressing it, before he surfaced for air and treaded water for a moment, exhausted. Dimly he could hear Allie Shaw crying on shore, legs drawn up to her chest. Horror threatening to swamp him, Sam finally swam back to shore and crawled out, trembling. He dug his fingers into the muddy bank.

“Is this what you were trying to tell me? Fucking. Stupid shit visions.” Sam spat on the ground. “What good are these if I can never prevent anything?”

Above the bank, Allie looked up with a weak groan and Sam begrudgingly picked himself up from the mud, bashed down the screaming grief threatening to swallow him whole, and went to take care of the victim.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Sam,” Donna said gently as though addressing a tormented animal. “Sam.” She had one arm around Allie, covered in a blanket despite the heat and shivering from shock. She held out her other arm towards Sam who stood in the water again, calf-deep in the river current as he scanned the smooth water between the banks.

“We have to get out there. Go find them.” His voice sounded cold to his ears, professional. He’d taken care of everything smoothly, checking on Allie and making sure she wasn’t about to sprint into the water after the horse, then borrowing her phone to call Donna and give them their exact location along the park trail.

“Sam,” Donna said, her voice calm and firm. “I’ve already called in our water search and rescue unit. They’re on their way. Do you have any idea which direction they might have...swum?” She looked across the wide river and Sam tried not to feel absolute despair at the still water.

“Maybe the horse took them to some kind of underwater lair? A bubble? Do backahasten breathe air?”

“I don’t know,” said Donna. “I’m sorry.”

Her expression was kind but her words were blunt and Sam couldn’t help but flinch a little. Of course he knew the lore hadn’t turned up anything. He scowled. “There’s always a way.”

“We’ll find them, Sam. I promise you. Up until now these attacks have been every few months, not every couple of days. Does it feel like the attacker’s stepping up to you?”

Sam looked at her for a moment, struggling to understand the question, then finally nodded. “They must...know we’re close. Did you--” He dropped his head and sighed, rubbing at his forehead. “Did you figure out anything else? Did William tell you anything?”

“Yeah, got a coupla leads,” Donna said grimly. “I’ll tell ya all about it. Let’s get you dry and--.”

“No.” Sam shook his head vigorously, stepping back away from Donna and the shaking Allie. “No. I need to find Dean and Cas. I’m gonna… I just need a little privacy to...you know.” He raised his brows at Donna, willing her to understand that he intended to seek another vision. Any edge they had to find Dean and Cas, find that horse, was something he’d do in a heartbeat. He just needed to remove distractions, focus, and let the power within him swell.

Her eyes widened and nodded. “Ah! Hokay, then. I’ll just...walk Ms. Shaw to the car to get warmed up. You’ll be along soon?”

“Yeah. I-- It shouldn’t take long.”

“Be careful, Sam.” Donna ushered Allie away and Sam settled on the bank of the river, sitting down to lessen the chance of stumbling or collapsing during the vision. He closed his eyes and thought of Dean, of Castiel, of the horse.

The vision hurt like a bitch, pain knifing through his head and reverberating through his body like he was on the wrong end of a taser. Sam clenched his teeth but a moan escaped regardless.

_He saw the river. He saw the horse._

_There were flashes of white against murky green water and he reached out towards the beast, his own hand fish pale in the failing light. And then the horse crested the surface, rode the water in towards shore. Sam was both the horse and outside the horse. He watched himself swim to shore. The horse’s back was empty. Dean and Castiel were gone._

_The backahasten traveled towards a tall home on the riverbank, windows cut like diamonds. A young man stood on the porch._

_Sam squinted through the wavering air and noticed that there were actually two silhouettes standing on the back porch. Sergeant Elk stepped from the shadowy honeysuckle growing at the edge of the house, gun raised towards the man. The man threw his hands up and..._

Sam’s eyes shot open and he gasped like he’d forgotten to breathe. He realized he was lying in the muddy grass and he clenched the mown lawn in his fists, using it to help him roll over onto his knees. He knelt for a few seconds, breathing carefully through his nose trying to quell the nausea that frequently accompanied a vision. Then, when he felt a little more stable, Sam clambered to his feet, gathered up Castiel’s discarded angel blade and Dean’s gun, and ran for Donna.

His heart roared in agony over his brother and Castiel; the need to do something to save them was nearly overpowering. But in the end, it always came down to the job. Sam had recognized that house, and the woman with the gun. And he didn’t have a shred of a clue about the whereabouts of Dean or Castiel. Only one thing was plain: they had to get William Somerset away from the water before it was too late. And if the horse showed up Sam was more than happy to test its immortality by slicing it to ribbons with an angel blade.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was something about the way Sam emerged from the trees running full tilt towards the parking lot that made Donna bark at Allie to buckle up in the back seat of her car. Donna slammed the rear door of her cruiser shut as Sam approached, panting from what must have been a sprint down the entire length of the trail.

“What’s going on?” Donna asked, searching Sam’s face for any indication of whether he was about to tell her good or devastating news about their friends. Punctuated by gasps that seemed to be brought on more by tension than fatigue, Sam filled her in on what happened in his vision.

“And you think that’s happening now? Today?” Donna asked quietly, aware of Allie just a thin pane of glass away.

“As best as I can tell,” Sam said, bracing himself against the car. “Yes. The uh, angle of the sun, uh. It just...felt like it. I just… I feel...”

“Good enough for me,” Donna said as she rounded the front of the car in a brisk jog. She paused and swayed with halted momentum. She dropped her voice, glancing again towards Allie. “Talked to William this morning. Got a couple suspects.” She rapidly filled Sam in on the death of the little boy at William's party nearly fifteen years ago. “There are a few people who were in that barn that are still alive. Presumably the kid’s friend, Mike Last-name-unknown, Allie, and Sergeant Elk.” Donna glanced at him briefly to take in his reaction. Sam’s jaw dropped open. “If you really think it’s going down now I’ll rip a hole in the asphalt to get us there. Otherwise I’d like to get Allie somewhere away from the water. Our survivor count is pretty dang dismal.”

A muscle worked in Sam’s jaw and his gaze flickered with indecision. Then, seeming to settle on something, he nodded sharply. “I think if we don’t hurry we’ll be too late,” Sam said. “If she stays in the car?”

Donna nodded, trying to push as much reassurance as she could towards him. “She’ll be fine in the car. Let’s go.”

“Wait! Donna.” Sam winced. “About Sergeant Elk… I saw her. In my vision, I saw her holding a gun, pointing it at William outside the Somerset home. What if she’s--”

Donna felt her shoulders sag. _Not Elk._ It couldn’t be. “Noted,” she said grimly and got into the car, Sam following her example. She flipped on her cruiser lights and peeled out of the parking lot, tearing up the road in their haste to get to the Somerset house.

~~~~~~~~~~

When they arrived a dull gray unmarked law enforcement car sat in the driveway. Donna pulled up beside it, a clouded expression on her face, and then turned around to level a stern look at Allie. “Don’t get outta this car, okay? You’ll be safe as long as you stay in here.” Allie nodded at her, wide-eyed and pale.

Donna and Sam climbed out of the cruiser and Sam handed her Dean’s gun. He avoided her eyes as he did so, but she couldn't miss seeing naked grief on his face. “Witch killing bullets,” he explained.

Donna nodded and took Dean’s gun reverently. “Got it. Sam...”

Sam's jaw clenched and he jerked his head in an awful approximation of a nod. “I'm with you, Donna.”

“We'll find them, Sam.”

Sam swallowed and raised his gun, a storm raging in his eyes. “I know,” he said, then strode towards the house. Donna looked after him for a moment, frowning. Sam was clearly accustomed to working under the crippling weight of grief and worry, but that didn't mean it didn't go against all her instincts to have him on the job right now. That was the hunter way – perseverance through unbelievable pain. _I swear we'll find Dean and Cas_ , she thought. _I swear to you, Sam._

Donna rang the doorbell, then knocked loudly on the door and when there was no answer she tried the knob. The door was unlocked. Donna jerked her chin towards the edge of the house and Sam nodded, slipping quietly by the side of the house and disappearing around the corner. She ran through the first floor, doing only a cursory investigation of the rooms leading towards the back of the house. Raised voices sounded from the back porch.

Donna spotted them through the tall windows overlooking the river. William stood on the patio, hands drawn up to his chest and his face a rictus of fear, as Sergeant Elk pointed her gun at him. Her jaw was set hard and she stood in a calm, wide stance Donna would have been proud of on any other day. She heard Sam yell from the side of the house, “It’s over, Elk! Give this up. Let him go and we can talk.”

Sergeant Elk tilted her chin up. Her gun wavered as she looked towards Sam and through the screen door Donna heard her say, “Wait, what? I’m not—“

A shadow passed over the windows like a high speed video of the sun setting through the trees. Donna shoved open the screen door, swiveling immediately towards Elk, her jaw dropping. A tree branch dangling over the balcony had dipped low until its leaves scraped the railing. The branch bowed like a dancer down towards Elk, who had only just noticed the lacy shadows from the leafy branch scattering all around her. “Look out!” Donna shouted and she dropped her ready-to-fire stance in favor of lunging towards Elk, intent on saving her from the tree branch sweeping down to knock her aside.

Only, the branch didn’t knock her aside. Elk shouted in surprise as the tree limb descended onto her shoulder and arm, knocking the gun away. And then the branch closed around Elk like a fist and swept her off her feet, drawing her up in the air to dangle seven feet above the stones below. Donna stared up at Elk in shock for a few pounding heartbeats.

Then several things happened at once. As Elk struggled in the branches of the tree shadowing the balcony Sam shouted in pain. Donna swiveled to look at Sam in time to see a many limbed buckthorn swarm him where he stood near the edge of the woods. “Donna!” he shouted. “The river! Stop—” His voice cut out and inside the swirling branches she could just make out his slumping figure sliding towards the ground. Movement caught her eye and William Somerset, mouth slack as though he were in a trance, began to descend the stairs. Donna turned her head towards the river and then quickly looked anywhere but directly at the water where a massive white horse stood on the bank, glowing like a starburst of light in her peripheral vision. William had apparently met the horse’s gaze. He moved towards the stairs, in the horse’s thrall.

A figure stepped out of the shadows just off the side of the porch and Donna turned, her gun trained on the interloper. It was a young man, face twisted in a grimace. His eyes glowed green, bright as sunshine through a leaf, and he held an object Donna immediately recognized as the missing amulet. The amulet twisted frantically from its chain as though blasted by an unseen wind.

“Drop the amulet,” Donna said, her voice steady despite her shaken nerves. “You don’t want to do this.” If Elk was innocent (and currently wrapped up in a tree), and Allie huddled in her car post-attack, this must be the third person from the barn. “Mike,” she tried tentatively, “you can stop this.”

“I go by Michael now,” the man said with a dismissive snort. “And I’ll stop when the job’s done.” He clutched the amulet and held it up towards her. Above Donna’s head, the branch holding Elk shivered. William was halfway down the steps by now on his continuous progress down to the river.

Donna grimaced. “Michael, put the gun down. I’m not going to warn ya again.” The cracking sound was her only warning. A massive shadow hurtled towards the ground and she threw herself out of the way as the branch holding Elk crashed to the porch below. It was a wide branch, wide enough that, although Donna rolled out of the way as soon as she realized what was happening, she still couldn’t avoid it on the narrow balcony.

Donna blinked in the sifting dust and leaves. Her arm hurt and she realized her forearm was pinned the ground, knuckles kissing the stone from the pressure of the tree. Elk lay in the nest of branches, her eyes closed and face ashen. Donna hoped she was still alive. She tugged at her arm and managed to pull it free, though it throbbed painfully. Dean’s gun was wedged under the branch as solidly as as though the branch had been aiming for the gun. She scraped dust from her face, fingers coming away wet with blood where she must have struck her head, or been struck by the tree.

“Nice try, hunter,” Michael said quietly.

Donna stared, shocked. “How did you know?”

Michael laughed. “Please I read the paper. Headless killers? Missing hearts? I’m not an idiot. Hell, you might be the most effective Sheriff Stillwater’s ever had. But you’re just not good enough.” He chuckled again, low and mirthless. “I know there’s not a fucking thing you can do to stop me. I just need to finish what I started and then I’ll go, okay? You’ll never see me again. You and,” he waggled his fingers towards Sam, “your little friend can even go free. Though Elk’s gonna have to go. If she’s not dead already.”

Donna’s fingers sparked as feeling returned and her eyes flicked around, taking stock of the situation. From her position in the leaves of the branch she could see Michael standing casually at the base of the balcony. The buckthorn holding Sam was nearby. Elk was either trapped, or dead. William was nearly to the water.

He killed my best friend,” Michael said dully. He breathed heavily, his face pale and glittering with sweat as he stared at her. “He was like my brother. His family…they were my family. I owed them so much. And this…this fucker. It was all his fault. What happened to Jake. His family.”

He swayed and Donna began to wonder if whatever powers he possessed were topping out. Maybe she could wait him out. Only, no, William was still on his way to the horse and Donna was running out of time. “Let William go. He was just a child.”

“Please. He made him go in that horse pen. Him and his stupid friends. I mean, neither of us knew the first thing about horses. But when Will The-Sun-Sets-in-My-Ass Somerset invites you to a fuckin’ horse party, you go. It took me _years_ to realize the horse was a fucking pissed off time bomb. I mean, all the signs were there but when you don’t know horses you just--. You just have no idea. Jake and I were totally clueless. Will and his fucking friends and that shitty stable aid...well, they knew alright. They knew exactly what they were doing and they let it happen. They sent him in with that crazed fucking horse. They _made_ him kill himself in that horse stall. Did you know his parents paid off his dad? Gave him ten thousand for his life. Ten thousand and he signed some kind stupid fucking agreement that they’d never sue. I watched that family fall apart after Jake died. He was everything to them. Everything to me.” Michael swayed again and some of the glowing green in his eyes faded as he stared towards the river. “I swore I’d make William hurt. Take everything from him like he did from me.”

There was a grunt from the side of the house, just audible beneath the collapsed buckthorn. “You waited all this time,” Sam said weakly.

“Sam! You alright?” Donna asked only daring to spare a flicker of a glance in his direction. Sam was sitting up, pale hands winding through the buckthorn cage.

“Peachy,” Sam said drily. His gun, loaded with witch killing bullets, lay just feet away on the other side of the branches. “Donna,” Sam said weakly. “You’ve gotta get down there. Stop William. The horse—“

Donna took advantage of Sam's distraction and pulled out her service weapon, leveling it at Michael. The witch laughed. “Wow. You really think that’s gonna do anything? I’m a witch. Your stupid bullets won’t do a thing to me.”

Donna shot Michael in the chest. She aimed for the heart, and watched the bullet rip into him. Michael flinched back, his mouth open in a wide O of shock and Donna took that moment to scramble to her feet. She pressed her hands into the balcony railing and vaulted over the side while Michael stumbled backward, fixated on the hole in his chest.

Donna bounded down the terraced gardens, shoes squelching in the soft earth. It was clumsy going, the terraces tall enough to feel like elaborately staged jumps rather than steps. Donna's hurtling descent felt like something between flying and falling and she pushed herself to tear down the hill faster. William was almost to the horse.

Donna raced towards William, and tried to rapidly come up with a plan. Her best bet was to knock out William. If he were unconscious he couldn’t climb on the horse and Donna could run back up to the patio and try to help Sam. She reached the bottom of the terraced gardens and sprinted across the short lawn.

William climbed onto the horse.

The backahasten turned and began to walk into the water, hooves sliding into the muddy bank as it waded into the river. Donna slowed for just a fraction of a second, achingly aware of the turquoise hex bag shoved in her pocket, and the spell she’d memorized last night. If she got on the horse both she and William might die anyway. She could stand back and let the river take William, double down on countering Michael’s witchy attack. She could take the easier path.

She shook her head. “Aw, heck no,” she gasped. Donna ran out onto the short dock, muscles screaming, and launched herself onto the horse’s back as it submerged itself and its rider in the river. She landed on the horse's back behind William’s passive body and water swirled around their waists as the horse waded into the deeper channel.

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael seemed to have forgotten about Sam, fixated as he was on watching the horse disappear into the water. Sam stretched his arm through the branches, fingers scrabbling at the grass. He could almost reach his gun.

Donna was submerged now to her chest and from riffles flowing around them the horse was heading into stronger current, nearly to the drop off point. This far away, Sam couldn’t tell if the spell Donna surely must be trying was having any effect. Their best chance was still to kill Michael and try to break the horse's control that way.

Sam reached for the gun and he pressed himself into the tree, fingers scrabbling inches from the grip. He stretched his arm through the branches until his shoulder screamed at the pressure.

He couldn’t reach it. It was over.

Sam slumped against the tree, something wild like despair winding up inside him. First Dean and Castiel, and now Donna too? Bile rose in his throat like the tide.

Only...there was something he could try. His visions had led him to this house, this place. He was using them to save people. He _would_ save people. Alongside his visions, back in those dark demon days, Sam had also had the power to move objects. It was true that those abilities had dropped away the instant he’d stopped dosing on demon blood but maybe...just maybe. Sam closed his eyes, trying to block out the sound of the water, the picture of Donna disappearing into the river, the memory of his brother and Castiel gliding into nothing.

Sam let the world fall away and he focused on the gun. He pictured it where it lay on the patio, and envisioned it as a red hot object on a field of faded blue. Sam closed his eyes and focused on the red gun. His blue hand. He willed the gun to slide. Dimly he was aware of something hot and wet running from his nose. Echoes of pain shook around him but it all felt unreal compared to the heat of the gun and the cool, cool slide of it across the marble.

The drag of the gun across the ground felt hours long - a long sensuous tease of metal and stone. The gun thwacked into his hand and Sam blinked once. Twice. Then he raised the gun and fired it.

The amulet shattered as the first bullet struck and shards flew from it to land in the ground and on the stone all around them. Michael turned to him in shock. The second bullet landed between Michael’s eyes, which faded from green to a dull brown in an instant. The buckthorn sagged around Sam as Michael toppled to the ground.

“Donna?” Sam took a deep, struggling breath as he remembered the danger was not yet over. The horse had Donna. Sam kicked his way out of the branches, desperate for a machete or a decent blade – anything to help him break free from the tree. He shoved his way from the buckthorn, kicking and crawling his way from the tangled branches. “Donna!”

The back yard was so quiet. Elk lay motionless in the massive fallen tree branch. Michael lay dead on the patio.

Down at the river, the horse stood fetlock deep in the water with its head craned around to pin its riders beneath one eye. Donna and William sat on its back completely drenched, but alive.

~~~~~~~~~~

Donna rushed to finish the spell as water slid up her throat. She tilted her chin up, desperately hoping that she had done the incantation right. There would be no second chance. Water lapped at her chin, her earlobes. Water closed over her mouth, her nose, and slipped, cool and final, over her eyes.

The spell had failed.

Donna held her breath, already desperate for oxygen from her mad race to the river, and closed her eyes. And the water stayed where it was, riffling against her upturned face. Her legs were glued to the horse’s back like iron forged to its sides but her hands could move. She dug her fingers into the cool horse hair, only realizing after a moment that this was likely how Angela Somerset had died - on the back of a horse, nails digging into its sides.

The hex bag burned in her pocket like a hot coal, making her skin feel electric in the water. She felt connected to the river, enormous for just the barest moment like she was part of a spidering force stretching through the waters of the state. Water covered her face. Her lungs burned. Donna found herself intensely jealous of William who had a couple more inches of height than her and still breathed comfortably - albeit dazedly - above the water.  

 _Peachy. This is how I’m going to go. Drowning in an inch of water._ The crushing need to inhale bore down like a hurricane, utterly unavoidable. And then the horse took one graceful step backward, ascending the slope just enough to afford her two inches of air.

 _Two inches._ Donna gasped, sucking in air greedily, her heart pounding. As her mind scrambled to grasp that they weren’t, in fact, dead she realized the horse was… Well, there really wasn’t a good word for it. Emoting, perhaps?

 _Who are you?_ the horse asked.

“Sheriff Donna Hanscum,” Donna coughed, water tickling at her chin and the horse’s thoughts tickling her mind like a fuzzy dream. “And you don’t wanna kill us.” On the other side of William, Donna could see the horse’s ears swivel. “Can you hear me, horse?”

 _Skinnende,_ the horse replied.

“Well, Skinnende. How about you let us go? You’re free of the spell now, aren’t ya?”

The horse swayed its head, swirling its nose in the water. It seemed to be thinking. _I am free?_

Donna patted the hex bag in her pocket. “Got a spell here sayin’ you’re a free horse.” _And crossed fingers and a prayer._

The horse shuffled on its feet, as though in awkward reflection. _I_ am _free! I will go._ It began to walk back into the river again.

“Whoa, no no no!” Donna shouted, craning her neck just as high as she could get it. “You’re free of the spell. You’re free to - to make your own decisions. Just let us go and we’ll never have to see each other again.”

The horse dropped its head. _I am far from my brethren. But I know our ways and they do not change._

“No.”

 _You have climbed astride to enter the river with me. This is a sacrifice. It is a sacred compact I must follow._ The horse bobbed its head vigorously, splashing the water with its nose. _It will be swift, Sheriff Donna Hanscum. The river will pull you in and you can rest._ Donna felt the horse’s regret slide around her mind like a catfish coasting along a riverbed. _I can rest._

“No.” Donna’s hands trembled. “No, because-- Because--” Her mind was a white hot oven, thoughts decimated in the fires of panic. “What if there’s another way?” She remembered a story her grandmother used to tell. In it, a water horse had tried to trick a girl by offering to plow her wheat field for spring if only she would climb onto its back first. The girl had asked it to prove its plowing skills. The water horse in the story ended up plowing field after field for her and the girl didn’t die. “My grandma used to say,” Donna said, voice shaking with nerves, “that purpose binds us to the earth and one another. There’s another compact I can call on.” She took a deep breath. “Instead of drowning us you should work with me. Be bound to me.” The horse’s ears swiveled but it did not walk further into the river so Donna pressed on. “I always wanted to start a mounted division. Let William go and work with me, Skinnende.”

A gunshot cracked the air, then another and the horse tossed its head and danced in panic, sending waves over Donna’s nose. She thought desperately of Sam, hoping that he had fired the shots and that he wasn’t lying bleeding and alone up by the house.

Her proposal hung in the air, the water rushing past her neck, a cool reminder of her peril. She knew that she was hanging all her hopes on an old fable her grandmother used to tell her, but if there was ever a time to call on fable and ancient lore codified into stories, hunting was when you did it. Her heart rattled in her chest. “You’re free from the amulet’s call but I call you to _my_ purpose.” She said more firmly, then took a deep, struggling breath. “When I no longer have need of you then you can carry me under on that day. And that day only. You’re free now. This is your choice. But if you work with me then nobody has to die today. Forge a compact with me and we both have a future a whole heck of a lot brighter than either of us had before.”

The horse stood in the water for what felt like a century. And then it backed up one careful step after another. Docilely it walked them to shore. As soon as it stepped onto land Donna could feel her legs release from the horse’s side. She nearly toppled off the horse, and her knees were weak with relief and the aftereffects of flooding adrenaline.

The horse snorted as Donna slumped against its rump. Mist curled from its nostrils as it turned its head towards her. _We have a compact,_ it said.

~~~~~~~~~~

By the time Sam limped his way down to shore Donna had dismounted and was helping a very shaky William from the horse’s quiet back. William skittered away as soon as he touched the ground and collapsed onto the wall of the lowest terraced bed, his face pale.

“What happened?” gasped Sam. “Is everything okay? Is the horse--? I thought you would be--”

“Dead?” Donna, whose legs felt considerably jelly-like as well, laid a careful hand against the backahasten’s mane. She let out a shaky laugh. ”I thought that’d be the case too. But me and Skinnende here. Well, we got a compact.”

“A...what?” Sam looked between Donna and the horse but he dropped his gun slowly to his side, then reached up and scratched his bramble-torn face with his other hand. “Sorry. Donna, did you call the horse Skinnende?”

Emotions, so sluggish while she’d been teetering on the edge of death on the horse, caught up to her and she grinned. “Oh yah. That’s its name. Skinnende here’s gonna be my police horse.” She cocked her head in a deliberately over-the-top sunny manner, delighting in Sam’s breathless confusion and her own improbable survival. “Always wanted to start a mounted division.”

“What is a horse doing here?” William broke in, his voice rising in panic as his mind caught up to the situation. He pressed his hands along his wet clothing. “What am I doing here?”

“We’ll explain everything,” Donna said. _Or, mostly everything._ “Sam, did you take out Michael?”

“What the hell is a horse doing here?” a wobbly voice asked from the steps.

“Sergeant Elk!” Donna cried, rushing to her battered sergeant. “You okay?”

Elk winced. She was bloody, with red blotches and lumps rising across her skin. “Never been grabbed by a tree before. I’m a little…shaken up.”

Donna nodded. “Understandable.” She looked between Elk and the horse, trying and failing to piece together a reasonable explanation that wouldn’t veer into monsters-are-real territory. Skinnende, post-freedom, glowed like a bulb in the late afternoon shade along the riverbank. “Why don’t we head up to the house? Talk this out?”

But Elk just stood stock still and stared at the horse, then turned to look up at the porch where the mangled tree branch blocked much of the balcony space. “All that weird stuff. I can’t believe…I never thought.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I never thought it was true.”

“Weird stuff,” Donna repeated sharply, hackles immediately rising, brain kicking into high gear to try to figure out a way to spin it. There had to be a way to spin it. There was _always_ a way. “What do you mean?”

Elk, still ashen, looked at Donna. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’ve been all these weird cases. I just thought, you know, people deserve the truth.”

Donna’s eyes narrowed. “Weird cases,” she said.

“Like severed heads and…and burned bodies. Missing hearts. And I could tell it was being covered up. I’ve been talking with my friend about it. All this weird stuff. He’s friends with a bunch of reporters and we--” She looked fiercely at Donna for a moment. “I knew you were covering it up. But I didn’t know why. And now I…” Elk shook her head. “Magic is real? Magical horses...are real?”

Sam nodded, eyes narrowed at Skinnende. “Magic is real,” he affirmed.

“And monsters,” Donna added, giving up. Her heart sank. _Elk_ was the mole. Steadfast, smart, promising Sergeant Elk had been leaking details from her hunting cases to the press. And now she _knew_ that monsters and magic and dark things in the world were real. That either meant having to discredit Elk openly should she choose to share this new knowledge with the wider world, or it meant simply that Donna had failed to protect yet another person from the supernatural’s creeping darkness. Donna didn’t know which revelation hurt worse but she stowed it deep, deep down when Sam next spoke.

“Speaking of monsters…” Sam said and his voice curled with malice as he turned to look the backahasten in the eye. “Where’s my brother?”


	5. Feasts

_Three hours earlier._

Castiel opened his eyes. The world was mud brown and cool and he blinked for a moment, trying to get his bearings. His lips parted. Water rushed in, then the memories. Castiel sputtered in the water, flailing in the river. He kicked, and his legs found the ground, shoes digging into the soft riverbed. Castiel drew himself upright, the movement burning along his chest where the backahasten had kicked him. He pressed a hand to his shirt and felt the mending bones slapping together, sinew and muscle regrowing as his grace suffused the cells and brought them back from the brink of death. His blade was gone and he squinted towards shore, hand clenching reflexively.

Dean sat on the horse.

Dimly, he was aware of Sam splashing through the shallow water, and of the stretch of river between himself and his blade, which shone silver-bright on the shore. He didn’t have to think about what he was going to do next. His body screamed, maybe he screamed, and he ran towards Dean as the horse and its rider sank into the water.

When Castiel reached Dean he fastened his hands around Dean’s arms and pulled as hard as he could. Water crept up Dean’s torso like an inescapable curse. Dean was pliant under his hands. “Dean,” Castiel ground out, panic adding to the tight pain in his chest. “Come on. Please. Please.”

Water slipped to his shoulders, his neck. Castiel wrapped his arms around Dean while the horse walked calmly into the water, its victim secure. Castiel took one last struggling breath, his arms vicelike around Dean, and then the cool river covered them in slow green-lit water.

The river channel was only shallow for a few more feet before it dropped off steeply. The horse reached this point and dove. Once under water the horse changed. It was hard to tell exactly how, given that Castiel was dangling along its side, buffeted by the horse’s churning legs. Its movements suddenly seemed less like a galloping horse and more like a fish tail undulating in the water. The river rushed past and Castiel pried at Dean’s legs for a moment before pulling himself higher to draw level with Dean’s lolling head.

Dean hadn’t breathed in any water yet. He was still holding his breath - perhaps by some very deep instinct. But humans couldn’t function without oxygen for long and bubbles of spent air trickled from his mouth. Castiel twisted himself around and pressed his lips over Dean’s own and breathed in the lungful of air he’d captured before they went under. Then, with one arm bracketed around Dean’s shoulder and torso, he dug his other hand down under Dean’s leg, trying to pry it away from the horse enough to free it. But every time he managed to pull away his thigh, or his knee, or his calf, the rest of his leg would stick right back onto the horse.

Bubbles leaked from Dean’s mouth like stars along the milky way and Castiel, desperate now, began to pour his grace into Dean. They could outlast the horse together. Surely the backahasten would grow impatient and release the victim from its back? Fish skirted around them, silvery blurs where the light from the surface caught at them.

Grace flowed into Dean, warming Castiel’s hands where they met Dean’s body. It took Castiel several minutes - too long - to recognize that too much grace flowed between them. The horse seemed to be using Dean as a conduit. Beneath Dean, the horse began to glow silver blue, the color of grace light. Castiel’s hands began to tremble as the chill of the water began to reach him. _Of course. Fae magic._

Once Castiel understood that his powers were being consumed by the backahasten his mind raced to make a new plan. He couldn’t keep Dean alive for long and without enough grace, he might not be able to keep himself alive either. Castiel could let go and save himself, but he couldn’t make the backahasten release Dean. The horse, he realized, truly wouldn’t let Dean go until he was dead.

Castiel cut off the grace flow, stoppered it inside of himself once again, and let Dean take one, sharp inhale of water. Even with his grace closed off, Castiel could sense the water entering Dean’s lungs. He could feel Dean’s body tremble in his embrace as it fought for life and lost. Dean fell entirely limp now. Soon the river’s chill would take away even the illusion of life.

Castiel knew Dean was truly gone when he fell away from the horse. The backahasten rushed off, a roaring silver blur, leaving Castiel turning in the churning water, Dean’s body clasped close in his arms.

Castiel kicked at the water, every movement a grinding, screaming symphony of agony as his slowly healing bones creaked under the pressure. He swam to the surface, surprised to find themselves close to a gently sloping lawn. He drew himself up, hauling Dean’s body up into his arms, and carried him to shore.

Castiel laid Dean onto the grass and collapsed onto his knees next to him. He pressed his palms against Dean’s beloved, violet-cast face and poured his grace into him. Castiel shook from terror, from the terrible depletion of his power by the water worse, and from despair. Castiel’s eyes lost focus but his hands clutched at Dean, sending blazing blue grace into his body until his vision swam into black and he collapsed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam’s fingers flexed against his gun. He’d seen how much effect bullets had on the horse back at the park, but that didn’t mean he was above sending a few through the creature just on principle. “Where the hell’s my brother?” he growled.

Donna held up her hands. “Okay. Just calm down, Sam.”

“Donna,” Sam said, grinding his teeth. “I know you like to see the best in everything but my god. This thing took Dean! It took Cas! It drowned seven people this year!” He clenched his empty fist, feeling it shake against his injured side. “I want some answers even if I have to go get Cas’s angel blade and carve them out of it.”

“Sam!” Donna’s voice hardened and she threw out a hand, setting herself firmly between himself and the horse. “Just calm down and let me ask, okay?”

Sam pressed a shaking hand to his forehead. “You’re-- You...you can talk to it. Of course.” He sighed as Donna turned to the horse. “Ask it-- Ask it--” He couldn’t finish the thought, the possibility that Dean and Cas were dead at the bottom of the river stole his breath away.

“Skinnende,” Donna said. “That last guy the witch compelled you to take. Did he--? D’you know where he is? Where they are?” The horse dipped its head as though in shame. Its eyes slid shut. Donna’s face fell. “Oh.”

“Fuck.” Something dark yawned wide inside of Sam.

Donna continued to learn forward towards the horse, as though listening to it speak. “Sam, it says that Dean--” She took a deep breath as though forcing herself to go on. “With that amulet controlling Skinnende, death was the only way off for Dean. It says it dropped ‘em near a low bank.”

“Them?” Sam’s heart began to beat again.

“Oh yeah. Says the angel was real strong. It doesn’t know what happened after. Michael called it here right away. But maybe they’re okay? Maybe Cas could save him?”

Sam trembled at the news that Castiel had managed to stay with his brother. If Castiel was alive, Sam knew he would find a way to bring Dean back - even if he had to harrow Heaven itself. “Did it say where?” Sam, hope flooding back, was dimly aware of what a ridiculous tableau this must seem, with Donna talking earnestly to a glowing horse while a tree-mangled officer sat with her arm around the victim in the middle of the vic’s garden bed.

Donna finished conversing quietly with the horse and turned to him, her expression pained. “Skinnende doesn’t know exactly where. But we’ve got search and rescue out. I’ll make sure they comb the banks. We’ll find ‘em, Sam. Okay?”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “They could be hurt. Or...or--” He exhaled sharply. “I can’t just sit around and wait. I need to…” He trailed off and stared at the water. Distantly, he said, “I’m gonna try to find them again.” He gestured at the assembly at the water’s edge. “Do you mind if I...?”

“Sure, Sam. You do what you gotta, okay?” She leveled a stern look at him. “Do not leave without me, Winchester.”

“Yeah, No, I won’t. Thanks, Donna.” Sam stalked up to the house, trembling beneath his skin, and found a quiet room with a soft place to sit. He settled himself there, closed his eyes, and pushed at the visions.

_Water above. Water below. A pale hand - his hand? Dean’s hand? - floated on the current before it was roughly snatched away. Powerful arms grabbed his waist and carried him up through the water and into the sky._

_He opened his eyes to grass transposed like prison bars across his vision. Left to grow long it tickled his nose where he lay on his side. A pale hand - his hand? Dean’s hand? - lay on the ground, fingers curled towards the clouds. Just beyond squatted a small house, painted red as bricks. A tire swing dangled from a tree. It twisted in the wind like a noose._

_He willed his fingers to move. They did not move. He willed his eyes to close and to open, his mouth to form words, but there he stayed still, unmoving, eyes wide. Darkness closed in._

Sam snapped out of his vision with a gasp and, ignoring the fire in his head, rushed to find Donna. While Sam had been out of his own head Donna had managed to get William and Sergeant Elk back up the house. Sam stumbled out onto the front stoop, chasing after Donna’s cheerful voice, and nearly ran into Sergeant Elk and Allie Shaw firmly locked in each others’ embrace, passionately kissing. Donna stood with William near her cruiser with what looked like case documentation pulled up on a tablet.

“Um.” Sam cleared his throat as he skidded to a stop. “Donna?”

Elk and Allie pulled apart and four curious faces turned towards him. “What’d you find out?” Donna bent to set the tablet on the passenger seat before heading over to where Sam stood.

“Are your friends okay?” Elk asked.

Sam shot her a confused glance, displeasure tickling at his gut at the realization that the number of people who seemed to know he had visions now totalled four - and three were strangers to him. “I don’t know. I didn’t see…” There was no way to answer that without falling apart. “I don’t know. But I did see something that might be helpful.” He described the house, the tire swing, and the trees to her in detail.

Donna screwed up her mouth in thought. “Red house with a tire swing. Hmm…”

“I know where that is,” William said. “I grew up on this river. There’s a house like that about a mile north of here.” He frowned and scratched his head before pulling up his phone. “Let’s see. Let me think…” William walked over to Sam and Donna, and they watched as he navigated the river through a map on his phone. “It’s probably right around...here,” he said, dropping a pin to mark the place.

“Great,” Donna said. “Would ya send that to me?” She looked over at Elk. “Sergeant,” she said and her tone instantly cooled. Sergeant Elk stepped guiltily away from Allie, watching Donna warily. “We’ve got lots to talk over,” Donna said sharply. “But until then, ya think you can handle this crime scene while I head out with Sam?”

Elk’s expression cleared. She looked surprised and Sam guessed that she had expected to lose her job on the spot, now that she was revealed as the source of the leaked monster hunt case information. “I-- Yes. Yes, Sheriff. I can. I’ll be…” She looked at the house and Sam pictured her thinking about the dead witch, the shattered amulet, the downed, twisted trees, the deep impressions of hooves in the wet bank. Elk gulped. “I’ll handle it,” she said.

“Good,” Donna said, nodding to her sharply. She jerked her head towards the car. “Let’s scoot, Winchester.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Dean woke up freezing, his lungs on fire. He rocked to his stomach, forehead pressing into soft, wet grass, and retched. Water poured from him. His lungs burned.

When the nausea began to ebb, and he was able to draw in first one clean breath, then another, Dean balanced himself on his forearms and lifted himself shakily so he could investigate his surroundings.

Castiel lay on his side, folded over onto himself. He was pale and soaking wet. He wasn’t breathing. _He doesn’t need to breathe,_ he told himself frantically as his palms shook against Castiel’s cheeks. “Cas?” he said, voice hoarse. “Cas!”

Dean slipped his hands down Castiel’s cheeks, trailed his fingers down his motionless throat, and wound his fists into Castiel’s suit coat. “Cas,” he shouted, hauling him up and shaking him hard. Castiel’s head rolled to the side.

He was so very cold.

That old, familiar void of despair began to rise in Dean once more, swallowing his words and licking at the tears gathering in his eyes. Promising dark, black revenge.

And then Castiel coughed quietly. “Dean,” he said, his eyes still closed tight. “Dean.”

Dean tried to sweep Castiel up in his arms but he was too weak. His arms shook and Dean collapsed over him instead. He pressed his nose into Castiel’s neck and gulped air that smelled like pondweed, his mouth working to get out his relief that Castiel was alive. They’d made it through, again. “Cas. You okay?”

Slowly, Castiel slid one arm up to tangle a fist in Dean’s shirt. “I’m okay, Dean.” His voice was rough, barely there in fact. But Dean grinned at the familiar sound and buried himself in the embrace.

While they lay there, collapsed around each other in the damp grass, cicadas took up a musical whirl, tones rising and falling like the tide. A strong breeze blew down the riverway and the trees rustled like an ocean above them. Now, Dean could feel a heartbeat from Castiel. He could feel the tickle of his breath at his throat. Dean relaxed with a shudder and pulled back from Castiel only enough to rearrange himself over him. He slid an arm around Castiel’s waist and a leg over his hips. “Cas,” he said finally. “Did I drown?” Castiel was silent and Dean groaned. “Friggin’ great. Thanks for saving me.”

Castiel inhaled slowly, deeply, then let the breath out again. Finally, he said, “What part of ‘don’t look into the horse’s eyes’ didn’t you understand?”

“Oh, you’re one to talk. Hand to hand combat with a horse? Really?”

Castiel began to run his fingers through Dean’s hair, soft and slow. His hand shook.

“Shit, man. What’d I tell you about using up all your grace on me?” Dean pushed himself up far enough to take in more of Castiel. He lay beneath him drenched and far too pale. His lips were blue. “Come on. Let’s get you inside. Get you dried off.”

Dean pulled them both up and, supporting Castiel, managed to drag them to the back door of the little red house. He pounded on the glass but when nobody answered the door he broke the large glass paneled window with a chair and pulled them both inside through the fluttering curtains.

The furniture inside the house was covered in white sheets. “Yahtzee,” murmured Dean. “A vacation home. Let’s get you outta those wet clothes.” He pulled Castiel to a small, sunny back bedroom and stripped off his wet clothes. Castiel could barely prop himself upright and he was still so pale, with ugly black bags shadowing his eyes. Dean wrapped him in a mostly dust-free comforter he found in the closet, settled him onto his side on the bed, and patted his shoulder absently. Dean still felt like unmitigated crap, of course, but at least he was moving. That was more than he could say for Castiel. He fished Castiel’s phone out of the damp clothing on the floor and then pulled out his own. Both cell phones were useless, waterlogged paperweights. “Be right back, man. I’m gonna try to find a phone. Maybe there’s a land line somewhere.”

By the time Dean finished searching the small house his hands shook with cold and shock as well. He sighed and looked down at his trembling fingers. “Well, fuck. Ain’t nothing like dying to shock the system.” He dragged himself back to the room with Castiel and stood for a moment, swaying as his vision sparked.

“Dean,” Castiel breathed as soon as Dean entered the room. “I’m fine.” He didn’t open his eyes.

“Uh huh. I ain’t buying that line.” He pulled off his own wet clothing, leaving them in a heap on the floor with Castiel’s suit and peeled away the blanket just enough so he could crawl next to Castiel. He wrapped his body around Castiel, pressing their cold flesh together under the blanket. “We both need some rest,” he whispered against Castiel’s wet curls. “Get our strength back.”

“Mmmph,” Castiel said and he wriggled back into Dean’s embrace, twining their fingers together and pressing their hands to his chest.

They slept.

~~~~~~~~~~

Castiel woke up, which was unusual enough of a sensation to make him flinch a little as he did so. He was lying on his side, wrapped in a blanket with Dean’s hand curled into his stomach and his face pressed against Castiel’s shoulders. “Dean,” Castiel said, desperately as memories flooded back. “Are you okay?” Worry consumed him. He didn’t remember much after trying to bring Dean back to life. How injured was he? Why were they lying on a strange bed?

“I’m fine, man.” Behind him, Dean’s yawn was like a gale force wind. “Shit. Dying takes it outta you.” Castiel clenched Dean’s hand tighter and Dean squeezed back, rubbing his thumb along Castiel’s fingertips. “I’m fine. More importantly, how are you? Don’t think for a second I didn’t notice you actually sleeping.”

Castiel took a moment to feel out his body. His broken ribs felt intact and while his body ached in general, he didn’t think he suffered any serious injury anymore. He took a deep breath and reached for his grace, allowing it to run through the cells of his vessel. Then, he laid a hand on Dean and sent the same healing energy into his arm.

Dean jumped at the touch of grace. “Fuck. Guess you _are_ feeling better.”

Castiel drew Dean’s hand to his lips. “I do have excellent recovery time.”

Dean groaned then nuzzled his head into the back of Castiel’s neck. “Glad you’re okay.”

“Glad you’re okay.”

The room, for a while, was quiet. Dean slid a foot gently along Castiel’s calf, down to his ankle and toes, and back up again. The motion was soft, gentle, and seemingly unconsciously done. _We should go find Sam,_ Castiel thought and opened his mouth to say so when Dean’s hips pressed slowly against him. Dean nudged his nose along Castiel’s hairline until his lips hovered just behind Castiel’s ear. His breathing changed, becoming heavier, faster.

Dean’s cock pressed carefully into the cleft of Castiel’s ass, pulsing like a heartbeat into hardness as his knee pushed between Castiel’s legs. He continued to slide one foot along Castiel’s calf - up and down, up and down - and his hips pressed lightly but inexorably against Castiel. His lips parted behind Castiel’s ear and closed on his earlobe in gentle nibbles. Dean wriggled his hand free and smoothed it down Castiel’s chest. His fingers trailed down to his belly, where Castiel sucked in a hard breath, and stopped to flatten against his pelvis. “Dean,” Castiel groaned, floored by the sudden shift in the mood.

“I got excellent recovery time, too,” Dean whispered into his ear before leaning into Castiel in a heavy surge that laid his body heavily against Castiel’s spine and ass and increasingly pleasure-roused thighs. He planted small kisses along the blade of Castiel’s cheek.

“Oh. Yes, you--” Castiel picked up Dean’s hand from his stomach and placed it lower, then ground slowly and sensuously back into Dean. Sam could wait. They could take a little more time here to recover, in the sunshine and the warm glow of each other.

~~~~~~~~~~

The driveway to the house had been gated and chained so Donna and Sam had to bushwhack their way through the shoreline underbrush to get to the clearing behind the little red house. Donna’s heart sank at the sight that met them. The yard was empty save for the impression of something heavy which had flattened the grass. Donna laid a calming hand on Sam’s arm as they looked up and down the small yard. “Sam,” she said. “Window on that door’s broken.”

Sam’s face lit up. “Dean!” he yelled, and began to run.

Donna led the way into the house, following a trail of pooled water to a room tucked into the front corner of the little cottage. As soon as she rounded the door she froze and slapped her arm across the doorway, barring Sam from entering. She squinched her eyes shut and then turned her head to look at Sam. From within, Dean shouted in surprise. “Dude! A little more warning next time!”

“Hokay!” Donna laughed a little hysterically and shook her head frantically at Sam, practically sick with joy and shock. She mouthed _they’re naked_ to him and his eyes grew wide as saucers before sliding into unamused slits. “Sorry about that, guys,” Donna said, sounding like she was about to break down into giggles. “We’ll just be outside.” She pushed at Sam’s shoulders, urging him to turn around and head towards the door while behind her Dean swore a long, quiet stream of curses.

By the time Dean and Castiel emerged, dressed in their wet clothing, looking rumpled and red and sated, Donna had successfully controlled the urge to belly laugh right in their faces. “Glad you could join us,” she managed to say.

Dean sheepishly grinned, his fingers tangled in Castiel’s. “Laugh it up, Chuckles,” he said. He threw his arms out wide and Sam took the invitation and pulled both Dean and Castiel into a firm embrace, thumping their shoulders soundly. Dean reached out an arm towards Donna and beckoned her into the group hug. “So what’s our situation?” he rumbled into Donna’s forehead.

“Witch is dead,” Sam said eventually, stepping back from the embrace and scrubbing at his eyes. “Allie, Elk, and William are all okay. Horse is defused and back in the water. And you guys are giant dicks for not calling us pretty much as soon as you were conscious.”

Donna laughed and pulled out of the hug as well, stepping back to enjoy the welcome sight of her friends safe.

“Our cell phones were dead,” Castiel said, looking between Sam and Donna, his expression a study in remorse.

“And so was I.” Dean said, managing to sound cheerful about it.

“Jesus, Dean” Sam said. “I-- You’re--”

“Relax, I’m fine.” Dean waved a hand insouciantly. He rocked his and Castiel’s hands a little as he said, “Thanks to Cas.” Castiel shrugged and an awkward half smile grew across his face.

Donna stood before the trio of hunters and crossed her arms, relief to see them all safe turning her limbs shaky. A lazy insect drone wound a wreath of tranquility around the moment, the sky blushing pink as twilight approached. Her life could be a solid blur sometimes, particularly in times of crisis when dark creatures stalked the people she’d sworn to protect. But this, right now? In the company of her friends after a successful hunt life felt pretty much perfect.

As they walked back along the shoreline to where she’d parked her cruiser, Donna thought about the river and the horse that lived inside of it. The corners of her mouth drifted up into a smile.

~~~~~~~~~~

Sam took a swig of beer and leaned back in the canvas camp chair. The evening was quiet, save for the snapping fire, the high chorus of frogs, and the occasional _shush_ of the backahasten’s moon-pale tail as it switched over the grass where it lay by the side of the river.

Sam stared at the horse for a while, frowning. It lay gracefully on the riverbank in the shadow of the trees, well away from the warm fire crackling in Donna’s fire pit. The horse had its head up and positioned as though it stared out over the water at the distant lights on the opposite shore. Occasionally it would turn its head, as though reassuring itself that Donna was still there. Sam worried at his lip with his teeth and turned to look at Donna.

She was staring at him. “Skinnende’s quiet, I’ll give her that.” she said with her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “But it’s a dang good thing she lives in the river. I doubt zoning would let me get away with sneaking it in my shed for too long.”

“So it’ll...what? Hang out in the river and visit occasionally?”

“Somethin’ like that.” Donna shrugged. “I might revamp my boat shed into more of a water horse stable. Honestly, I’m making it up as I go along.”

“You don’t think letting it go, letting it back in the water…” said Dean, gaze focused on where he twisted a brat on a stick over red coals. “You don’t think it’s gonna start killing again?”

Donna looked back at the horse and, as if it sensed her eye, it turned to look at her. “Well, now. That’s an easy answer, at least. It’s hard to explain, but it’s an easy answer. Something in that spell maybe connected us? It doesn’t want to kill. It hated killing. Doing what it did… All those people… That was like torture. Anyway, Skinnende can’t leave this river and it can’t die. Sometimes you gotta just trust that...”

“It can do better.” Dean lifted his brat and watched the steam rise from the stick. “I get it, I do.” He grimaced at her. “I just worry, is all. But hey! If there’s anyone that can keep a magical river horse, it’s probably you, Donna.”

She smiled and raised her drink to him. “Thanks, Dean.” Then, she grimaced. “Hope I don’t have to catch it fish or something. Ariel’s gonna do some research on what these critters eat. If anything.”

Sam took another sip of beer and balanced it against his stomach, feeling the cold condensation seep through his shirt. “Probably something esoteric like moonbeams or the first flowers of spring, given that it’s fae. We’ll research when we get back to the bunker, too, Donna. We want to help you make a go of this. As much as we can.”

“And find you a way outta your weird, fairy tale death-by-drowning contract,” Dean said.

“Appreciate it.” She rolled her shoulders and tapped a fingernail against the glass of her beer bottle. They were silent for a while until she said, “Ya know, it’s the darndest feeling, being beholden to the law and to the people you serve, and lying through your teeth at the same time.”

“Donna, you have to do that,” Castiel said, gently.

“Oh, I know. I know. And heck. I don’t want kids to grow up knowing the beasts in the woods with the sharp teeth are real. It’s just…hard sometimes. But living this secret life, like a vigilante? Oh, in so many ways it goes against everything I stand for.”

“You feel like a monster,” Sam guessed.

She looked at him sharply. “Sometimes. Yes.”

“Monsters. Man.” Dean groaned. “What a weird case. A glo-stick horse, a bad witch, a good witch. Thank god Ariel got the name of the last victim. Or we would’ve had a couple more bodies to bury.”

Something rose up in Sam, then. It had been building all afternoon as Sam skirted around the real reason they’d managed to locate Dean and Castiel at the otherwise unassuming house along the miles long river. He cleared his throat. “Dean. Listen. I, uh… About monsters.”

Dimly, he was aware of Donna freezing in place, of Castiel’s quiet sympathetic stare. Sam focused on Dean’s open, confused expression while his heart pounded in terror. “I was the one who saw Allie.”

Dean looked at him in confusion “Saw her...when?”

Sam looked at his brother, willing him to understand. His heart beat in a rapid tattoo and he twisted the bottle against his shirt nervously. Around and around and around. “I saw Allie attacked in a vision, Dean. I had a vision.” Sam looked down into his upturned palms as though confessing to a priest. “I’ve been _having_ visions,” he said in a rush. “For almost a year. And I deliberately— Look, we didn’t have any other way of seeing the victims. That gave us a lead to go on and I took it.”

“You’ve been having visions,” Dean said slowly. “Like before? Like…before the apocalypse? I thought those went away, man.”

“Me too. I did too. But they’re back and I don’t - I can’t… They showed me Allie, William. They showed me where you guys were and I-- I just--”

Dean leaned forward. “Sam just what are you trying to tell me here? Do you need my help? Do you— is there anything else going on?”

Sam shook his head and oh god, his hands were actually trembling, beer shaking in his bottle.

“Sam,” Dean said again, and his voice came out achingly gentle. “Just tell me. What do you need?”

“I don’t know.” Sam shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. I helped that girl and it felt good. Really good to make something useful out of what used to...to curse me. It felt good to not feel weighted by fear or - or…” He choked on the next word. “Blood. But I guess I just need to know…” He took another deep, struggling breath. “I need to know your thoughts.”

“My thoughts?” Dean stared at him with a shuttered expression, vague in the flickering campfire light.

“About what I’m doing. If it’s right.”

“You want to keep having these visions?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure if I have a choice. But…I think I do, Dean.”

Dean settled back in his chair again and took a long swig. “Alright.”

Sam sputtered. Of all the ways he’d imagined this conversation happening - anger, confusion, denial - this quiet acceptance knocked him off his feet. “Just…alright? You’re okay with this?”

Dean raised his brows at Sam, though the expression wobbled on his face. He took a massive bite of his bratwurst and began to chew. “Yeah man, what did you expect?” he asked around his food.

“I don’t know.” Anger bubbled unexpectedly in Sam’s gut. “You used to say this made me a monster, man. I wasn’t ready to tell you before but I think I could make a difference now and I just--” His voice was rising despite his best efforts at controlling it.

“We’re cool man.” Dean said quietly and raised his hands as all three of them stared at him disbelievingly. “Oh come on. This can’t be that surprising. I’ve changed since then, haven’t I?” He turned to Castiel. “Haven’t I? You know that.” He leaned forward earnestly, and stared Sam down. “I know it’s all shades of gray and it sucks sometimes. It’s confusing. But you’re the last person who’d go evil over it. Not after everything you’ve been through. And as far as me being against the supernatural? Why the fuck would you say that when I’m sitting here sharing beers with my damn psychic brother, a glowing horse, and my angel boyfriend?” He tried to crack a smile, though it faltered a little in the silence that followed.

Sam stared at his brother, speechless. The fire crackled over the silence. Castiel broke the quiet, chuckling, and snaked his hand into Dean's and then Dean said, “I love Cas for all the ways that he’s different than us, man. Why wouldn’t you think I’d act the same about my brother? Sam, sometimes you really are a dumbass.”

A black shriveled thing that Sam had lived with now for many years fell away from him then. Sam felt tears spring to his eyes. “Yeah, “ he said through his burning throat. “Guess I am.”

Dean took a self-satisfied bite of brat, though his eyes glistened, over-bright. “We’re all weird, alright? Now let’s all NOT hug about it and go on team horseback rides tonight.” The horse picked up its head in interest. “Kidding! Oh my god am I kidding.” Dean leaned over to Cas then, brushed his lips on his temple and whispered, audibly, “I will ride _you_ later.”

“Dean! The heck?” Donna rolled her eyes and looked on them all with a grin, raising her beer. “To the weirdos,” she toasted.

Sam raised his own, feeling lighter than he’d felt in years. “I’ll drink to that.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Actual police horses were trained for months before entering any kind of crowd situation. But Donna, with her mental connection to Skinnende, proudly rode the water horse in the annual Corn Fest parade just weeks after forging their odd partnership. It had been magnificent to canter amongst her officers, leading the Sheriff’s Department float with Skinnende showboating down the street.

The old Donna would have kept Skinnende a secret and never held up the actual “work” part of the compact they’d struck on the river. But Donna felt deep in her bones that finding a true partnership was something they both needed. They’d find their own way out of deadly curses and tradition, in time. The Winchesters were on the case, and that was good enough for her.

The parade was over and the evening fireworks long faded. Skinnende stood in the shallow water of the river, glimmering like a fallen star. It swished its tail impatiently. _Let’s go._

“Hold your horses,” Donna grumbled good naturedly. She nudged Skinnende’s nose with her fist, then turned her hand over to expose her palm. Skinnende lapped up the sugar-frosted donut bite.

_More._

“Later. Let’s go for a run, first.” Skinnende bowed low and Donna waded into the shallow water and pulled herself astride. The horse tossed its head exultantly as she stood. Between one breath and the next the horse took off, charging like a beam of light across the water, hooves skimming the surface. Skinnende took them over the river and up through its still channels, then through empty fields and quiet woods.

Donna closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax into Skinnende’s mane. Things were better at work. Elk was settling into her new understanding of hunting and seemed to be shaping up to become a useful ally. Still, these days Donna liked to think if she ever were elected out of a job, she’d buy some saddlebags and pack them up. She’d put them on a shining, white horse and wander the rivers of the world with a shotgun strapped to her back, hunting the wild things that prowled through the shadows.

The night wind caressed her face and teased her hair into a wild bouquet. Donna grinned to feel the speed of Skinnende and the depth of their connection. Her job, her life, balanced on a razor's edge but for now - tonight - they’d simply be creatures of the wind and earth and water together. Donna wound her fingers through Skinnende’s water-cool mane and whooped for joy under the midnight sky.

**Author's Note:**

> A note on Sheriff Hanscum. A "Sheriff" is typically chief law enforcement officer for a whole county - not just a city. Thus, she's Washington County Sheriff (headquartered in Stillwater) rather than just "Sheriff of Stillwater." Listen, this is how the real world works. I don't make the rules :) 
> 
> My headcanon:
> 
> Donna and her ex husband Doug were both up for the same vacancy for the Sheriff post. The County Board appointed Donna to fill the vacancy, which she later cemented by getting elected by local citizens when the next election rolled around. (This is why Doug liked to call her a "wolf in sheep's clothing" - because he's a jealous bastard who thinks she stole his job.)
> 
> Donna wins her next election, too. But as hunting monsters tears into her life, she finds it more difficult to handle all that regular exposure to the public eye. 
> 
> I noticed that all of Donna's canon episodes revolved around some kind of relationship drama. She's getting over her ex, or confronting her ex, or realizing that not all men are her ex. I really wanted to put her in a story that centered around what I think is her greatest love: her job. Because when all is said and done, Donna's true love is her job. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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